


winter soldier ficlets

by ninemoons42



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Final Fantasy, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Babies, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Inception, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Stripper/Exotic Dancer, Alternate Universe - Wings, Amicable Exes, Angel Wings, Baby Bucky Barnes, Baby Steve Rogers, Baking, Billy Joel - Freeform, Birthday Cake, Birthday Fluff, Books, Bucky Barnes is a troll, Canon Compliant, Character Death, Chocobos, Cooking, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dancing, Dirty Dancing, Domestic Fluff, Dorms, Dreamsharing, Duet, F/M, Feast day of Saint George, First Aid, First Meetings, Food, Forehead Touching, Fourth of July, Grief/Mourning, Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) - Freeform, Holiday Sweaters, Hoodies, Inspired By Tumblr, Inspired by Art, Inspired by Fanart, Inspired by Music, Inspired by Photography, Introspection, La Diada de Sant Jordi, La Diada di Sant Jordi, M/M, Making Out, Marriage Proposal, Museums, Nightmares, POV Second Person, Piano, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Mission, Prank Wars, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Puppy Piles, Recovery Baking, Rings, Rock Stars, Roses, Skinny Steve, Sleep, Sleepy Cuddles, Slow Dancing, St. George's Day, Steve Rogers is a Troll, Tango, Teamwork, Ugly Holiday Sweaters, Video Blog, Wingfic, blanket burrito, bucky barnes blows shit up, sleep cute, the Louvre
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 15:24:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 60
Words: 25,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1515413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I could never now hope to compile all of the XMFC ficlets on my tumblr into one place. Now I'm going to try and do that, and be good and proper about it, for the Steve/Bucky stuff I've been writing. (Or at least I do tend to write Steve/Bucky, most of the time.)</p><p>The ficlets are not connected to each other unless otherwise stated, and may often, as so happens in AUs, wind up contradicting each other.</p><p>Guest stars from all over Marvel (and some who may not even be from those universes) may appear.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. he was the ghost in my dreams

**Author's Note:**

> I could never now hope to compile all of the XMFC ficlets on my tumblr into one place. Now I'm going to try and do that, and be good and proper about it, for the Steve/Bucky stuff I've been writing. (Or at least I do tend to write Steve/Bucky, most of the time.)
> 
> The ficlets are not connected to each other unless otherwise stated, and may often, as so happens in AUs, wind up contradicting each other.
> 
> Guest stars from all over Marvel (and some who may not even be from those universes) may appear.

He wakes up with the screams from his nightmares still echoing in the boxlike spaces of this room: nothing more than the barest minimum of wood and concrete and, whatever, tiles and a threadbare mattress and a window that’s been stuck half-open all the time he’s been here, and he can still hear, over the sound of the waves and the mournful cry of the wind, the blank terrible static of the machine that routinely stole his memories from him.

And he can still hear the voice that had been pleading with him: the voice of someone who claimed to be his friend.

"Friend," he mutters to himself, rolling that word around on his tongue in all the languages that he knows, and there are quite a lot of those, and he doesn’t have any idea of how they got there into his head in the first place, and they are also part of the noise that he walks in, that he can never seem to escape.

The word _friend_ tears at him, very slowly, very carefully, very gently. What does it mean? He knows the dictionary definition, and that’s it, he thinks. That’s all he ought to know.

But something in his head is stirring: the memories of someone else walking with him, talking to him, never asking for anything but the simple presence of him, and he hasn’t been able to identify that someone else no matter how hard he’s tried.

And when he looks down at the sea, far below, he thinks he keeps seeing a white star blinking up at him from the depths, nothing at all like the red he’d worn. A white star that had become inextricably linked to the voice and to the memories of that someone else, and he is not the Winter Soldier - he’s just someone lost, and someone who feels like he’s lost - something or someone.


	2. don’t think about elephants, soldier

The world of the dream was as perfect as it ever was, cold and sterile and just right, and Steve shook off the ice that crawled down the back of his neck and made a mental (dreaming?) note to tell Tony off about the corridors again, and then he drew his gun and started moving down the corridor.

He used to be a soldier; scratch that, he used to be very good at being a soldier, but at some point he was made to choose between his uniform and his heart and he didn’t think twice, didn’t hesitate, just made the choice, and now he was out (he’d been discharged, he won’t put any adverbs on it, just discharged) and now he was a soldier again but only in other people’s dreams.

Footsteps ahead; he checked his six, checked on either side of him, and the corridors were still empty so he swung soundlessly around the corner and got a wry, beautiful smile, and a familiar voice saying “What took you so long?” and he shook his head, put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder (and how did that happen, how did Bucky find out about Steve and chase him halfway around the world, already knee-deep in dreaming and Somnacin and the world of the unconscious, one of the best point men in the business, training with and working against people like Arthur Hardy and Emma Frost), and answered, “Lead the way.”

"Don’t I always?" Bucky asked, and Steve started running, blast of gunfire up ahead, large-caliber explosions and the sounds of people waking up and waking everyone else up, and together they changed the guns in their hands into much bigger things, a set of SMGs and a very big and very powerful rifle, and they skidded around the corner already shooting, always precise, always together.

When the corridor was cleared he smiled at Bucky, and Bucky grinned back, and he looked up one side of the T-junction while Bucky looked down the other, and when they moved off Bucky’s back was warm against his and this was where he was now, Steve thought, and it was, all things considered, a very good place to be (yes, up to and including the part where both Maria and Natasha were waiting impatiently to lead them to their actual objective, a safe wrapped around with several pounds of explosive and containing a new set of Helicarrier blueprints).


	3. a rose for love

She woke up with a start. 

The stars were growing cold and distant, subsumed in the brilliant warming light of the coming day.

She wrapped herself up in her blankets and padded, barefoot, to the tiny window in her bedroom: east-facing, so she could watch as the sun slowly began to peer over the horizon, golden soft warmth on the lines in her face that she could feel, born of another night of tossing and turning and fitful sleep.

What had happened to her, she thought, almost fondly. Sleeping by herself for so long, in beds of all sizes (and sometimes, when she’d been on the front lines, in no bed at all), and never thinking ill of it until she learned to get used to sleeping next to someone.

Someone who had a tendency to - 1 - pile the blankets and comforters onto her, knowing that she often had problems with keeping warm, and - 2 - who often added _himself_ to that pile of warming things, steady arms wrapped around her shoulders and holding her close, not at all restrictive.

He wasn’t here, now, and what a far cry this all was from the days of sleeping alone, and Stephanie ran her hands through her cut-short-again hair and shivered for a few more minutes before getting dressed.

Sweet fragrance stealing up the stairs. Her pulse quickened, and she hurried down, and - 

A dozen roses on the table, deep red beauties, spicy waft that she couldn’t get enough of.

And underneath the roses the book that she’d been combing the local bookstores for: a massive hardbound volume, _El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha_.

A scribble of a note, trailing ink stains: _You looked so beautiful while you were sleeping. I didn’t want to leave, but I had to run back out to get you some breakfast. See you in a few. Go back to bed after you see this, if you like. Bucky._

Stephanie smiled, and carefully picked up book and flowers, and went back upstairs. She straightened the sheets, scattered the roses over them, and climbed back into bed, holding the book close, waiting for Bucky to come back and take its place.


	4. ten years kashmir

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen to Ten Years Kashmir (Led Zeppelin by way of Corner Stone Cues) [HERE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9siTaLt_Vpw).

For once he’s up just in time to catch the sun rising over New York City. A place that he remembers, and a place that is completely unfamiliar to him. But this, this he knows: the sunlight reaching down the streets, filling up the corners with golden light, pouring over the garbage and the early risers alike. He’s too far up in the tower to see the children and the dogs already playing in the streets at this hour, but it’s not hard to think of them - and it’s good to remember them, both from the days when he’d first been around and now from these newer days.

He makes himself a cup of tea, pours cereal, quietly tells JARVIS to get some more milk for everyone because they’re all running low (and there are types of milk these days, even types of milk that don’t come from cows, and that doesn’t make a lot of sense to him but he goes with it), and he wanders into the media room. Everything is turned off, except for the music, and it’s been paused on something.

Bucky turns the music on.

At first the music is slow and contemplative and sweet, and it makes him grin to himself because he eats his cereal as he listens and the _crunch crunch_ is too loud - but as the minutes tick past, the music starts to become more and more intense, and he finds himself ignoring his breakfast, finds himself closing his eyes and getting into the music more and more.

Sweeping orchestra, not the kind he’d ever been able to listen to live when he was a kid, but this is Tony’s idea of a music player and surround sound, so he feels like he’s in the middle of all of these instruments, and then - 

A powerful riff, crescendo, voices wailing beautifully in the background, and he’s tense with longing and anticipation, his metal hand clenched into a tight fist.

At six minutes and twenty-one seconds the music _explodes_. 

Sam walks in, then, and says, “Cool, you’re getting some taste,” and Bucky looks at him, the spell broken in such a mundane way, utterly scandalized.


	5. ivory and steel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [this](http://luninosity.tumblr.com/post/83689855201) Political Animals gifset, and the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.

One day, a piano appears in Avengers Tower.

Steve is the first to find it. He’s been unable to sleep, lately. Partly it’s because of too much adrenaline in his system. He’s still technically on the run. Too many things to think about. Avengers Tower contains people he can trust, people he knows, people who watch his back, but Avengers Tower doesn’t quite contain a team, not yet. They’re still picking up the pieces. He’s still not up to welding them all back together again like he once did, with Chitauri breathing down their necks and the malevolent ice in Loki’s gaze.

Sure, Sam is here, and now Natasha is on her way back - she told him, personally, over the phone, instead of just emailing him or sending him some other kind of message - and for some reason Bruce is bringing in some kind of backup? Danvers and Ross - the names are unfamiliar to Steve. 

But. 

And there’s always a but.

There’s also the matter of the Winter Soldier. Of _Bucky_.

Who is here in the tower, but who is no longer the man Steve knew (his friend, his protector, his companion, his heart). A man stuck out of time. Stuck out of his mind.

Steve wishes he knew how all of that feels.

The first night, he sits at the piano. Just sits carefully on the bench because he doesn’t want to break it, doesn’t want to break anything, and if he put his hands on the keyboard he might not even be able to peck out any of the old songs, and he’s not entirely sure he wants to hear any of those old songs.

The second night, he tries to draw the strings.

The third, he turns his back on the piano entirely. Tries to hum instead. A ballad, a snatch of swing, a corny old advertising jingle.

On the fourth night, he’s no longer alone with the piano.

Burnished lamplight on one shoulder, tell-tale flares and reflections, and a melancholy old _old_ tune. Bucky’s hair hangs in his face, obscures most of his expressions, but Steve can see his throat working, see the tension in his jaw - but it’s not the tension of struggle, of trying to remember and trying to forget at the same time, of nightmares and sullen withdrawal.

No, he’s tense because he’s trying to remember what comes next. The music stops and starts. There is a certain fluidity as well as a certain hesitation to the cadences. 

Beethoven floats into the sleepless New York night and Steve is caught on it, hanging from the music, and he doesn’t ever want this moment to end. Bucky’s hands on the keys, slowly working back up to fluency. Steve’s heart is in his throat. The music wraps around him and around Bucky.


	6. perhaps, perhaps, perhaps

The first few nights, Steve lies awake in his new bed in his new bedroom in his new apartment. Everything is new, from the clothes on his back to the books scattered around in tidy little heaps. Everything is new and uncreased and unused and completely without personality, which is just what he feels in these displaced days, with the rain pouring down and the nights devoid of any relief in the form of the moon or of the faraway stars.

He’d always wanted to move to the big city, but he’s never really thought that the big city could be like this: so impersonal. So distant. He can’t just lean out the window and talk to the persons in the apartments next to his - he’s not even sure they’re occupied. The lobby has that vacant polish to it that speaks of mailboxes without names and people who don’t talk to each other as they pass on the stairs, as they share elevator rides up and down.

Days pass by. He tries to read and to amuse himself, and the books are interesting and the music makes him think. He cooks and he eats and there is never anyone to talk to as he washes his dishes, night after night. No one comes to visit; it might never be safe to visit.

And he can only rattle around in this place like a single pea in an oversized pod. The lack of faces, the lack of interaction, begins to get to him within a month or so.

One night he pulls up the windowsill in his bedroom and sticks his head out into the sullen humidity of the night - and instead of silence and the distant bleat of late night horns and late night speeding, he hears Beethoven instead: someone picking at the second and third movement of the Moonlight Sonata. 

For a moment, he smiles, and there’s nothing painful in the memory he recalls, though it’s a memory of fire and of blood and of screaming. He remembers his mother playing the piano, and being damn good at it, her hands flashing over the keyboard as they pounded out the passion and the power of the cadences.

The night after that, Steve meets the pianist. An easy smile, and stories lurking in his dark eyes, and a whimsical lilt to the voice, when he introduces himself: “Hi. I’m James, but please call me Bucky.”


	7. and my friends they talk on corners

Bucky doesn’t look up from his computer when the chair next to his creaks, when a shadow falls over his keyboard. He does smile, though, and wordlessly push the bread basket over to the man who’s just sat down next to him.

"Thanks," Steve says, and he orders coffee and an omelet from the waiter.

Bucky takes the buttered roll that Steve passes him, and eats it carefully. There’s no point in getting crumbs all over the keyboard, especially since it’s not actually his computer in the first place - he’s kind of liberated it from Charles for the time being.

Steve, next to him, is fretting a little bit - or at least for him it’s fretting: Steve glances at his watch every few minutes or so, and doesn’t want to let go of his mobile phone, and Bucky laughs and dumps three sugars into the coffee cup that the waiter brings over, and says, “Drink that and take a goddamn breath, you’re making me nervous.”

"Erik said he was going to be delayed a few minutes - it’s been a little longer than that," Steve says.

Bucky shrugs. “You’re dating a doctor, so you’re kind of inflicting this one upon yourself. All kinds of things delay them. You can rely on people like that, just not when it comes to getting anywhere on time.”

Steve snorts. “Why, are you dating a doctor too?”

"Not that kind of doctor, and you know it," he says. Charles is a damn good scientist. He gives lectures, hosts a podcast, and does a lot of work popularizing his chosen field, genetics. Bucky loves his determination and his incredible capacity for alcohol and his outstanding nerdiness.

The door to the diner opens, then, and Erik grins and kisses Steve and drops into the seat opposite Bucky’s, and his grin is wide and harried and tousled and Bucky kind of thinks he understands how Steve could like him so much, because Erik holds Steve’s hand tightly, unflinchingly, without any reservations.


	8. cooperative pranking, multiplayer style

"Flappy Bird," Bucky suggests.

Steve raises an eyebrow, and waits him out.

"Shit, okay, no," Bucky says after another moment. "You tried that already, didn’t you?"

"And I had to help contain Bruce when the game made him turn green and big and kind of uncontrollable. So no," Steve says. He bites his lip, scrolls carefully to the next screen. He knows his way around a tablet, but he can’t shake the thinking that these things are delicate - never mind that Clint and Natasha routinely literally throw the things around, and that no matter how many times Jane has bopped Darcy over the head with hers the damn thing refuses to break into pieces.

"Whatever version of Plants vs Zombies just came out," Bucky says next. "Like, everyone has to find the Yeti and kill it or else nothing happens."

"As funny as that sounds, that’ll take too long," Steve says, softening the blow with a wide grin and a squeeze to a metal shoulder. "If we frustrate them too much, they’ll kill us."

"We already live with the threat of Natalia Romanova over our heads," Bucky points out.

Okay, there’s not much Steve can say to that.

In the end, they enlist JARVIS to put several of the most frustrating Candy Crush levels on everyone’s devices, and retreat to the rec room to watch the show. (The first person to join them in the room is, naturally, Bruce, who overturns a bowl of popcorn on Bucky’s head and growls, “You’re both amateurs. Next time, use something else, like extended 2048.”

"There’s such a thing?" Steve asks.

The answer to that is a small, but definitely evil grin.)


	9. who has time to chase?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen to Everything is Never Quite Enough [HERE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_xQ9nSTXoE).

The scene shifts and changes and an intoxicating beat comes on over the speakers. Steve can’t help but lean into the music, trying to figure out what’s going on. Onscreen, the camera pans over a crowd of blue-shadowed dancers, and the first lines of the song come on, and there’s a heavy accent on the phrases that sound French.

Bucky whistles, softly, as he figures out what is already making Steve blush: Rene Russo is wearing a full-length gown that actually _is_ see-through in all the right/wrong places.

Steve watches, spellbound, as Pierce Brosnan advances and they intertwine, they connect, and all the while the music is an insidious growl, a gorgeous lash.

He wants to grab Bucky and dance with him, wants to kiss him right in the middle of the room, with all the windows showing off the New York City skyline, with the night falling on and on towards the morning and the distant stars ablaze.

But the scene is only just transitioning to Rene and Pierce alone in another part of what looks like a mansion of some kind, when Bucky snaps: “JARVIS, pause. Activate privacy mode. Play the song that they were using in the scene.”

"Movie paused. Privacy mode activated. The song is called _Everything is Never Quite Enough_ ,” JARVIS says, polite and discreet as always. 

A quiet click, and then silence, and then - the song comes back on.

In a daze, Steve lets Bucky yank him up to his feet - intoxicating, this, holding on to him by the metal arm, feeling the heat of his eyes, the bright startling shock of the initial kiss - demanding, drugging, and just when Steve’s about to fall in and give in Bucky spins away, and the tilt of his hips is singularly obscene and beautiful.

Steve licks his lips, and steps forward, into the siren call of the music, into the naked need in Bucky’s eyes.


	10. bounce off walls lose my footing and fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen to Inertia Creeps [HERE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3mn7EC-skg).

He almost misses how the music changes because all of a sudden everyone around him is cheering, and they're loud and they're exuberant and he has no idea what's going on, and all he can do is raise his fists along with the crowd and wonder.

A drugging beat. Slow and insidious and growing stronger, growing darker, and he catches his breath and pushes off from the wall. Hard to breathe. He's not sure if it's because of the drugs - he's not a fool, of course he's noticed people slipping each other little tablets, and that is also without taking the pervasive burr of pot and whatever else into consideration - or if it's because the crowd is finally getting to him.

He's been here for the last four hours, and he's been dancing, but only half-heartedly. He can't find anyone to really dance with, to really let loose with, to really dive into. Maybe the tiny redhead with the smoldering pout could have come close - but she'd been yanked away just at the tipping point. The same could be said for the rail-thin blond boy, smoky-eyed, beautifully high.

"Steve," someone says behind him. The sound is quiet and is nearly swallowed up in the raucous cheering. Is it even a real sound, he wonders. Who would know his name in this anonymous place full of anonymous faces and wild, anonymous dancing?

Only one way to find out. He looks back over his shoulder.

At first the bright blazing strobing lights blind him, and he can't make heads or tails of that beautiful gaze, holding his, compelling.

Familiar.

He's seen that intensity before.

"Remember me?" the other man murmurs.

Steve can hear him so clearly. The bass-beat thrums and throbs down every nerve. 

It's easy, after all, to say that name. It's on the tip of his tongue.

"Bucky," Steve says.

"Good, you remember," Bucky says. Leather jacket, no shirt beneath, and the material clings beautifully to muscle. Glitter on that skin, and rouge on his lips.

Steve doesn't know he's moving until his hand is cupping the back of Bucky's head, until the impact vibrates gently through them both. Bucky with his back against the wall, a shadowed corner, the occasional strobe licking at the sweat on Bucky's skin.

"I thought you didn't want - anything," Steve says, changing the word at the last minute. He's burning up, now, and not from the drugs or the lights or the music or the screaming. He's burning up with Bucky. Bucky has only been here for a few moments, and Bucky is the torch that's got him shaking and ready to scream, ready to break.

"I ran, and that was a mistake," Bucky whispers, forcing Steve to lean into him - and Bucky's words lick fire along his already overloaded nerves. "Not gonna do that again."

"Prove it," Steve whispers. Steve pleads. Steve growls.

"With pleasure."

The music. It always comes back to the music. Bucky's hands guiding his. He soon has Bucky by the hips, the two of them touching almost everywhere, the music moving them, melding them. A tentative sway becomes something confident, something knowing, something that is at last familiar: the beat of Bucky's body against his, shiver and shimmy and shock.

He wants to lead. He wants to follow. 

Bucky obliges him.

They dance, gripping each other. Hands roaming. Mouths exchanging gasped breaths. Sweat drips from Steve's temple and lands on Bucky's shoulder. Almost a kiss, soft sweet dangerous promise - 

Four rotating hips.

Bucky's hands encircling his wrists, now, advance and retreat, and Steve is hard and breathless - too hot, too exposed, not enough, and he wants so much more.

"And more you shall have," Bucky hisses, not letting go. His mouth crashes upon Steve's, kissing him and kissing him, until Steve doesn't have a choice, until Steve can't think, until Steve can only whimper and beg and every word and every labored breath is triumph.


	11. come with me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Birthday present for [nescienx](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nescienx).

He’s been in jets, and he’s flown them, and he’s done an awful lot of falling out of them. It’s a bad habit. He knows that. It makes people like Sam and Clint worried, and between them they’ve got themselves an entire catalogue of funny faces when they’re worried, but Steve’s learned to at least avoid making them worry. They’re the world’s worst mother hens, and that’s a terrible pun, all things considered, and he’s not sorry.

He knows that he was supposed to be doing this mission with Natasha, but she’s pursuing another series of investigations, and anyway he has a feeling he’ll be seeing her again before this particular dance is over.

"You have flight clearance, sir," crackles a voice in his ear. "Take off whenever you’re ready."

"Thank you," Steve replies, and again he glances over his shoulder. So Natasha’s not around - he still needs to be working with someone on this trip.

There aren’t a lot of people he can work with right now, though, not at this point, and he knows where the others are - they’re not here - so he can only nurture a faint kind of hope as to who he’ll be flying with.

A heavy step behind him.

Out of the corner of Steve’s eye, a flash of metal.

The man who swings his sturdy, steady frame into the co-pilot’s seat is wearing an unfamiliar navy-blue jacket and an entirely rakish little smile that Steve knows just a little bit too well. “Captain,” Bucky Barnes - also and still known as the Winter Soldier - says.

All kinds of possible responses flash through Steve’s mind, and in the end, he says, “Hey, Bucky.”

"They told me you were off on a mission today, and they told me you’d be flying - and they also told me you have a bad habit of falling out of flying things." Bucky’s grin grows with each word, until Steve aches to reach out and touch that grin, to remember what it feels like under his fingertips.

And then the full impact of Bucky’s words hits him, and then it’s all he can do to pick his jaw up from somewhere near his boots. “Where’d you learn how to read minds?” Steve asks. “I was just thinking, that’s a bad habit, and I need to break it - “

"Please, you act like I forgot about you, everything about you." There is an edge in that grin now, in that voice now. "I didn’t. I didn’t. Give me that much credit. I knew you, even then. I just couldn’t remember."

Steve reaches out for him and he finds Bucky’s hand halfway through the gesture. He has to smile, has to bite his lip, and he wants to keep looking at Bucky, but there are tears threatening to blur out that view. 

Bucky squeezes his hand, fierce, powerful, and then lets go.

Steve sighs.

"I’ll tell you what I remember. But first," Bucky says, "fly this mission with me."

Steve finally unsticks his tongue, and says, “That’s a promise.”


	12. I’m waking up

He still wakes up to the sudden smack of vibranium straight into his midsection, and to the immediately subsequent impact very nearly through unyielding and indifferent brick.

He still has nightmares about the look on that face, familiar from the mask on up. Mask or muzzle, and sometimes that’s the detail that breaks Steve’s heart - one out of so many things. The metal arm with its red star. The unkempt hair. The dead look in those eyes that had once lit up just to see him breathe. 

He’s not someone to forget. He remembers when it was a struggle just to see the next sunrise. He remembers fighting for his life, and he remembers Bucky’s hands, Bucky’s voice, pulling him forward, calling him on.

Now Steve finds himself waking up to that utter, utter lack of recognition in Bucky’s eyes. “Who the hell is Bucky?” The stuff of nightmares.

One more reason to dread the nights, to dread being tired, to fear his own dreams. Bucky, on top of everything else. Peggy’s memories slowly being taken from her. The Howling Commandos, gone, and he can’t endanger their families, not unless he wants to paint great red bullseyes on them, and that is something he won’t do. The Project Insight helicarriers are broken hulks of steel and ammunition and wrong, and he won’t subject them to that, not until he’s sure there are no vestiges of Project Insight left.

(He can’t bear to remember the names he caught glimpses of. Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, Jane Foster, and all the rest. Friends and allies and good people. More fuel for the flames of his nightmares. As if seeing Bucky fall and seeing Bucky rise up in front of him weren’t terrible enough.)

He sees Sam’s face in the mornings, and sometimes he hears Natasha’s voice in his ear, and he knows what they both know about him, which is that he’s running on fumes, and he doesn’t tell them that he’s been in this situation before. That last time, he’d been looking for Bucky, too.

Maybe they already know. They’re incredible people. He would be somewhere near dead if it hadn’t been for them.

He wakes up from his nightmares. He searches for HYDRA, and he finds them in dark corners and bright places alike, and he knows about how futility works, because he remembers the line, he remembers his mythology, and he wishes he didn’t.

_Cut one head off, two more will take its place._

Sometimes he hears that in Phillips’s voice. Someone else who is now dead and gone and lost from him.

SHIELD is gone, and his shield is gone, and all he has are nightmares. He hasn’t even recovered from the abrupt transition from the ’40s to the twenty-first century, and now there’s this, and someone will eventually have to pick up the broken pieces of him, he thinks, and he already wants to apologize to whoever that’s going to be.

And then they’re in the depths of winter, a series of jagged-toothed peaks snapping at the sky, and there’s a sudden burst of garbled static in his ear and something flying at him, and he - doesn’t move.

He waits to be cut down.

CLANG - a familiar pattern, circles and a star, and he feels the whistling wind of it, too close, almost enough to draw blood - 

And he almost, almost wishes he could be cut down. Maybe it’d be - atonement, in a way, his life for all of the others, for the only person who could have hurled the shield at him now - 

"Steve," says a voice that is no longer completely familiar, that is the voice he hears in his nightmares and in his memories. "Steve, it’s me. _It’s Bucky._ ”


	13. one more time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features the death of a major Avenger. Please be warned accordingly.

Eventually, they release you. Too many gentle voices, too many fixed smiles. You’d given up on getting any semblance of truth and - truth be told - there were bad days when you thought you would rather have preferred the cold and the pain and the static buzz of a complete and total wipe to the polite brush-offs and the prevarications.

But one day the faces confronting you belong to - huh - are you so bad off that they had to call in _Bruce Banner_? Are you going to need the kind of support - or restraints - that warrant the presence of _not only_ Natasha Romanoff (that’s the name she uses now, not the nicer one you half-remember from the Red Room, the prettier one) _but also_ Thor fucking Odinson? Why not Iron Man and that guy with the arrows, and Maria Hill or Sharon Carter with a motherfucking sniper rifle full of tranq darts, too?

They tell you that there will always be voices in your head.

They tell you that, in time, you’ll be able to integrate, and it’s all you’ve got to not actually start laughing right in their faces. Integration, hell, what is there to integrate but the same old same old thing across seventy damn years? Blood on your hands. A weapon, or none, in the immediate vicinity. Life unceremoniously snuffed out by you. You, standing over corpses. Integration? What does that even _mean_?

But you take in the twitches and the restless hands, and you’ve been left with very little but your own battered wits and the languages that you know that were never taught you, how to carry all kinds of weapons of mass and of personal destruction, and you say, _Okay, whatever, now sign me up for whatever you’re making Steve do because he can’t stand on his own two feet without me._

And that’s why you’re here. You’re in a high place, more than enough to call in patterns, more than enough to tell the nice flying people where to go. More than enough to be able to see the shield as little more than a distant crimson blur, white spinning star close to the ground. So high up and the sun is in your eyes, and you have comm lines to all of the other Avengers and the only one who’s not using his is, naturally, the jerk you actually followed into battle, one more time, over and over again.

The big green guy crashes into the scene. People laugh over your comm lines. 

So much confusion. You’re almost reminded of some mission or other, in that nightmare life marked with a red star that in actual hard reality meant absolutely nothing, and the feeling only gets stronger when - you hear it.

A high-pitched sound, little more than the quietest of whispers - and before you know you’ve taken in the breath for it you’re bellowing on the comm lines, and shocked silence follows in the wake of your words:

_Give me a head count, now! There’s a sniper out there and they’ve just started shooting! Everyone check in!_

Slowly, too slowly. The responses. They come. The man with the bow and arrows answers for the big green guy.

One missing voice.

One missing man.

You yell, _Clear the comms,_ and don’t hear anyone acknowledge _you_ \- you’re only concerned about getting a response. _Winter Soldier to Cap, come in, Cap, you’re the only one we’re waiting for._

Silence.

 _Steve. Answer me, Steve,_ you say, over and over.

A breath. Wet gurgle.

Fuck.

You throw yourself from cover. You don’t care about the sniper, snipers. Where is Captain America. Where the fuck is Steve.

Someone murmurs in your ear. Russian. You know the accent, and you’ve heard that pure blank horror before.

Natasha. She’s hurt, she’s bloodied up but good, but she’s still able to hunch over the body sprawled in her lap.

A body. Because this is only a body.

Steve.

Still warm.

Two bullets. One in the head. The other in the neck.

Exit wounds.

Blood everywhere, on her skin, and now on yours.

Steve.

You remember when he weighed close to nothing, and you know what his weight feels like braced over you.

Dead weight, now.

You look at Natasha, and Natasha is crying, and she says, _So are you._

The shield is dropped somewhere near you. Someone is talking: _Got one of the snipers - last thing he did - fucking hero - nothing to be done for him? - what do we do now?_

You don’t answer that, not in words.

What you do is this: you hold Steve in your arms and you close his eyes. You are grateful to Natasha that she left that for you to do. 

And then you take up the shield, and you say, _I’m not him._


	14. did you ever know that I had mine on you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen to a cover of "Eyes on Me" by Angela Aki [HERE](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/85531701011/ninemoons42-poormagic-hey-look-its-monday).
> 
> Written for [Keio](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Keio).

"See you in the morning," Dum Dum said, leading the rest of the Howling Commandos out the door. 

Steve answered with half a smile, not really listening, and that not at all because he was drunk. It was precisely the opposite condition for him. He’d had a few drinks, once or twice, always on a special occasion, before Dr. Erskine and everything else that had happened in a basement laboratory.

Now he could drink all he wanted and get precisely nothing out of it, which was a problem, because he was calm and composed in his jacket and with his shield sitting innocuously next to his feet, but he was actually on the verge of running for his life.

The only reason why he was still there was stepping up onto the stage, was sliding onto a chipped stool, was carefully and mindfully reopening the cabinet piano that had been shut and left behind by the woman who had spent the evening playing it.

Steve didn’t even have to be looking at the stage to know all of that; all he had to do was look at the glass in his hand, and at the reflections in it. Candles burning low, and sleepy patrons trudging out, and the room filling with shadows and his own trepidation and the weight of the metal he was carrying in one of his pockets.

Bucky. Bucky whose hair gleamed in the faint illumination of the last stage-light, whose hands rested shaking but sure on the revealed keyboard. 

"Remember this one, Steve," he asked, or he didn’t, and began to play.

Sweet lilting melody, something Steve had heard over and over, one of the songs that seemed to flow in and from Bucky and wouldn’t let him go, wouldn’t let Steve go.

"Sing along if you know the words." Bucky’s sliver-smile, his hands making the piano sing, filling the near-empty bar with echoes of home and of smoky nights, of sunrises in winter.

Steve hummed along. Just loud enough so he knew Bucky could hear him. He couldn’t trust himself to sing along with the words, because the words revealed too much of what he’d wanted to say for a long time.

That song ended, and Bucky fell into musical doodling, random beautiful sequences of melody without words.

Tomorrow, Steve thought, tomorrow they’d go after a train and then Steve had no idea what would happen next, for they’d made plans and gone over them over and over again and plans were only plans until the first shot was fired, the first punch was thrown, and what else was going to happen, and he couldn’t lose his nerve.

Bucky sang, softly, as though he were just putting the words together now, as though words were new and strange and also beautiful: _So let me come to you, close as I wanna be - close enough for me to feel your heart beating fast...._

Steve pulled the rings from his pocket. Put one on: thin and discreet, fitting perfectly on his fourth finger, the one with the blue line running down the interior of the band. He crossed the room, and climbed onto the stage, meeting Bucky’s warm welcoming smile with a strained smile of his own.

When Bucky paused, lifting his left hand as though to scratch the back of his head, Steve caught it in both of his own. Unable to meet Bucky’s eyes as he slid the second ring onto the fourth finger. Thin, discreet, and with the red line on the inside.

"And what’s this?" Bucky asked, eventually, after several moments of tilting his hand and the ring, this way and that toward the faint candles.

"Just a gift," Steve said, and knew Bucky saw his matching ring.


	15. the smell of the dryer, the roar of the happy night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [THIS](http://imaginebucky.tumblr.com/post/85990361175/imagine-bucky-having-one-really-big) imaginebucky post.

By the time Steve manages to stumble onto his floor in Avengers Tower Bruce has finished laughing softly at him and has gone on to offer him first aid, a cup of tea, and a pot of tea (more or less in that order) and Steve has said no to the first and a qualified yes to the second and to the third, some time later, when he’s recovered from crossing most of the world’s time zones in less than the humanly allotted time. No thanks to being literally tossed around between Carol and Tony and Sam and Thor. 

Steve is windburned and mostly frozen to the bones and all he wants is to try and warm up, and his floor smells, amazingly, like comfort and the kind of sleep he’d gladly fall into for days (if only Natasha and Clint wouldn’t sneak up on him and try to, he doesn’t know, goad him into singing Disney theme songs at the top of his voice again?).

He’s more than halfway into bed when he realizes the bed’s already occupied, when he realizes the bed is actually reeling him in with one metal hand and sleepy _are-you-all-right-punk_ s and Steve wearily, slowly, achingly yanks off his armor and his boots, puts the shield next to the nightstand, and wraps his arms around Bucky.

Bucky, who is already most of the way back to snoring. He snores loudly enough that Steve is happy for the soundproofing and he snores loudly enough for Steve to think of home, and the boisterous way Bucky slept, always taking up more than his share of the bed, all wayward hands and feet and -

Steve takes a deep, appreciative sniff of the hoodie that is apparently rucked partway up Bucky’s midsection. It smells like it just came out of the dryer and it leaves that warm, sweet smell on Bucky’s skin, and it’s got sleeves thick enough to cushion the usual chill of the metal arm, and Steve noses into the hood, presses a kiss to the back of Bucky’s neck, and is more than grateful to sleep.

(And in the morning he finds out that somehow Bucky has transferred the hoodie from his own body to Steve’s without Steve ever waking up for any part of that operation, and the material smells like Bucky’s sweat and Bucky’s skin, and that’s what he blames when he finally shows up on Bruce’s floor for his cup and pot of tea, over _fourteen hours_ late for the appointment.)


	16. i woke up and one of us was smiling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [THIS](http://liiiiiiing.tumblr.com/post/86110598945/day-29-what-ship-had-the-bed-proposal).

Even when he was smaller, thinner, Steve always seemed to take up so much of the bed that he slept in: there were pillows, and blankets, and on occasion crumbs from when he sneaked a bite from the icebox in the middle of the night.

(Bucky never minded the crumbs, and always spent a few minutes looking in the windows of the shops, trying to find something in the midst of the wartime rationing, something to bring home and tempt Steve’s fickle appetite with.)

Nothing seemed to have changed even now that Steve was likely _legitimately_ hogging the bed, what with that new size of his, and all of the energy he probably had to expend in the days and hours of superheroing.

(Shut up, that was totally a word, and he’d stolen it from Clint, who presumably knew about such things.)

A big bed. Big enough for two, and on occasion it was big enough for four or five, when movie nights turned into marathons and popcorn fights: Bucky would never admit it, but he really liked having Sam and Natasha and Clint around. They looked at him and they saw him, they knew he was real and recovering and working on being himself again, and some of them had experience with those things and all of them understood what he was going through.

A big bed that was currently being occupied just by Steve, who was holding on to a pillow that Bucky recognized by the strands of his own long hair: the same pillow Bucky had ended up sleeping on last night after the inevitable hours of tossing and turning and finally wearing himself out.

Steve, holding on to the idea of Bucky. The thing he’d done, apparently, through the decades of icy sleep, the year of chasing a man tormented by his memories and the deeds that had been forced onto his shoulders, the months of slow and careful and mindful recovery.

Steve’s voice, naming Bucky, calling him a friend, even when everyone in the world had been _right_ to run away from Bucky and to shun him.

The memories washing back in on him, like a strange tide, and filling him up with the conflict and the need to get back to someone who remembered, someone who might forgive.

There was a _lot_ Bucky’d never had a chance to say to Steve, before the war and during and then continuing through the struggle to come back to some kind of normal, of himself. It was hard to find words. He had learned to become better - if _better_ was always the right word - with actions. Showing up on Steve’s doorstep. Paying attention to what Steve said and did. Stealing into Steve’s bed and then staying there.

Now Bucky looked at what he was carrying in his hand and - metal, he thought, cold would wake Steve up and make him frown. Not the effect Bucky was going for, not this time. He raised his cupped hand to his mouth and breathed, slowly, carefully, warming his own fingers, warming the ring he was holding on to as if for dear life.

Steve’s voice, murmuring. His eyes moving rapidly, in dreams or in preparation for waking up.

Bucky sat down next to him, and said his name: “Steve.”

A smile, sweet and perfect, before those eyes opened and looked at him. “Hey, Bucky.”

"Hey." And Bucky gathered up his nerve. Took Steve’s hand in both of his own. The ring was plain polished silver except for the very tiny ruby on the inside of the band. He slid the ring onto Steve’s fourth finger, and had to swallow before he could force the words out. "It’s not the same metal as this," and he motioned to the silvery fingers with the fleshly ones. "But close enough maybe."

Silence. It would have been nerve-racking, it would have been painful, but for the fact that Bucky knew every expression on Steve’s face and knew that he was looking at wonder, and the bright second before laughter and tears.

He heard Steve swallow, loudly, and heard Steve whisper, “It’s beautiful, Buck. _Thank you._ Do you need me to say yes?”

Bucky laughed and heard his own tears around the edges. “Yes, Steve, say yes.”

"Yes, Bucky, _yes_.”


	17. you don’t have to talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by two separate posts on OTPs and forehead touching: [HERE](http://rozf.tumblr.com/post/86511874510/jaclcfrost-imagine-ur-otp-doing-the-forehead) and [HERE](http://nieniekoto.tumblr.com/post/86594854002/m-azing-imagining-your-otp-doing-the-forehead).

Steve thinks he might remember the very first time he ever bumped foreheads with Bucky. A memory of long-faded noise and long-sharpened colors. Knee-length shorts and the basic indignity thereof, and having to catch his breath in the midst of a series of sprints up and down the block. Heavy, hard gasping, the type that had so often driven him down to hands and knees, trying to get in enough air.

He remembers a familiar question: “Are you all right?” A face leaning down into his, still edged with boyish roundness.

Bucky, leaning towards him, and Steve leaning toward him in return, pulled in helplessly. Their foreheads touching, and Bucky’s eyebrows pulling together. “No fever?”

Of course, that was why he’d leaned in. Dirty and hot hands would do a bad job of checking Steve’s temperature. This way, all they had to share was sweat, and that was not really a problem, not when they’d slept still piled together on a deep dog day afternoon.

"No fever. You might be okay."

That had been the first one. He remembers many others. Saying goodbye, saying hello, saying things that were too difficult to put into words. A forehead touch was, and is, still more effective at saying _I’m glad you’re back_ and _you’ve been such an idiot_ at the same time, without the unwanted side-effects of hurt and worry.

It’s day - 24? 25? Has he already lost count? - of the hunt for Bucky. There are clues, and these are the kinds of clues that cannot be missed. Flash of metal and the zipping hiss of a bullet fired - not at Steve but at the man who’s attempting to punch Steve’s lights out. A black-bladed knife in the throat of a would-be assassin. There might as well be three on the hunt for HYDRA’s last tendrils instead of just two. 

And still Bucky doesn’t dare come any closer than a kill shot.

Steve lurches out of bed. Even he needs to sleep and he’s not been able to do that. There is always something to remember. It is always too warm or too cold. 

If this keeps up, he’ll wind up having to get fished out of somewhere once again, as he’d been fished out of an icy vastness, as he’d been fished from a river full of broken metal and wrongness.

He passes the window, paces, passes it again, and blinks as he clocks the shadow-shape on the other side of the glass.

Slowly, Steve turns around, and slowly, he approaches the window. 

The eyes on the other side narrow at him, but don’t flinch away, and more importantly _don’t move away_.

Steve opens the window. 

Bucky leans into him, and holds a hand up between them. Fingers curling inward, rapidly. Beckoning.

Steve swallows softly, and leans in, careful, deliberate, until his forehead is touching Bucky’s and isn’t that familiar and so new at the same time - for him to touch that well-known skin, seamed in strange lines and strange scars.

It’s difficult to look at Bucky this close. Steve’s eyes are crossing with the effort - but it’s worth it after all, because Bucky closes his eyes and leans in and very nearly sighs, and when he pushes in, when he climbs into the room, Steve lets him in. Relief, trepidation, and the barest flutter of something he doesn’t yet dare call hope.

 _Maybe everything’ll be okay,_ Steve thinks.


	18. safe space

It’s been a long week for Steve. He’s still a little bit in recovery. It still hurts if he moves his right arm too much. Too many punches aimed in the general direction of the bones. Yes, the shield absorbed the impacts; yes, some of the force got transferred anyway, because not all of the punches hit the shield. Some went awry. He’s lost the shiner but he’s still having problems with the shield.

And by god he’s going to take advantage of the downtime. Sidelined for a mission or two at least. Secretly or not-so-secretly, Steve feels nothing but relief. He’s been on the go for a while now. It’s nice to be able to stop, and the sunlight falls in just the right way on a particular couch he has in his rooms in Avengers Tower, and it’s easy to drop heavily into those cushions and close his eyes and go to sleep.

Bucky and Sam come in after a recon mission that had not entirely gone to pieces, and find him there (Steve doesn’t lock his floor, anyone can get on there without having to enter some kind of absurd password - that’s Tony, not him), and Sam just inclines his head at Bucky, letting him have first crack at their sleeping friend.

So Bucky fetches one of the sleeves that Darcy had crocheted for him, puts it on, and then sits down more or less on Steve’s feet. He’s awake only long enough to drape an arm around Sam when Sam sits down on the floor next to him, and then he’s out like a light - a light sleep, to be sure, enough that he can still hear Steve and Sam breathe - the kind of sleep he likes and seeks out.

Clint spots them when he flies one of the new Quinjets past the window, and he lets Natasha know. “Hey, looks like there’s a puppy pile going on at Steve’s. You in the mood for it?”

"Yes," Natasha says, and he helps her limp out of the Quinjet and helps her onto Steve’s floor. He helps her settle onto the rest of the couch, so she can prop her injured leg up and brace it with a couple of pillows. Then Clint sits down near her knees and reaches up to hold her hand. He makes a note to himself to apologize later, because he knows he snores when he’s tired.

Tony and Thor carefully carry Bruce in afterwards, and Carol makes up a nest for the four of them to share behind the couch.

Last of all is Rhodey, who takes several pictures of the group before he fits himself between Carol and Tony and puts his head on her shoulder and then drops off.

When Steve wakes up the first thing he notices is that there are other people close by, and that Bucky is humming softly next to his knees, and he leans over and whispers, “This is a nice way to sleep, isn’t it?”

And Bucky grins, tiredly. He kisses Steve’s cheek, and says, “Sure beats freezer burn.”


	19. it was always burning since the world’s been turning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen to We Didn't Start the Fire [HERE](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/87097297791/this-one-is-for-sera-yourethehellisbucky-who).
> 
> Written for seratonation.

Elevator. 

Alone.

Surrounded.

"This again?" Steve sighs.

Well, maybe it’s an improvement that today he’s facing, not burly SHIELD-turned-HYDRA soldiers, but a bunch of nasty, pesky, flying-sweeping-beeping robots. He might not need to feel guilty about beating them up - or, better yet, and this makes him smile a little, crushing the living daylights out of them.

He’s wearing two earpieces today: one of them has a direct line to Sam and to Natasha, who are currently in the basements of this building. They’re supposed to work their way up, and Steve is supposed to work his way down, and they should meet somewhere in the middle.

The other earpiece is - well, okay, he’s still a little guilty about this, because it doesn’t seem like sound tactical doctrine to be half-distracted by music from Sam’s iPod. But the musical selection is good and interesting and educational and so far Steve is enjoying the hits of 1989, and he can’t stop listening, so half-distracted it will have to be.

A flock of little robots wings in at him, shrieking metallic pissed-off, and he won’t deny that they make a rather satisfying CRUNCH when they hit his shield. After that, though, it’s mayhem, and then what should cue up on the playlist but - 

_Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray,_  
 _South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio,_  
 _Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television_  
 _North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe_

"Oh, nice," he says, to a chorus of robot buzzing and lasers, and Steve starts punching and ducking and weaving to the rhythm and the infectious drums of Billy Joel’s overly long list of a song.

He knows he starts singing somewhere in the middle of the second verse, because his voice echoes around the non-stop crunch and crack and whine of dying electronics, and he’s not half bad, or maybe that’s just the acoustics of the elevator.

"Cap you have incoming!" Sam’s voice, surprised, but maybe not actually concerned? "Jesus he's fast!"

"Get down, punk!" Okay, he’s heard that one before, he’s familiar with that voice - what he’s not familiar with (or not familiar with _enough_ ) is the pair of black boots crashing into the elevator, barely missing the side of his head.

Steve looks up from his crouch, from the shield, and Bucky - the Winter Soldier - no, _Bucky!_ \- is in the elevator with him, and the wind howls around them and the metal arm is in constant motion, hitting robot after robot like some demented game of whack-a-mole (he didn’t need Natasha to explain that to him, he just thought it was pure vicious fun).

"Come on, Rogers, keep up," Bucky says after a moment, "I ain’t going to be doing all your work for you."

Steve reacts without thinking. “That’s funny, which one of us was the lazy dog who hated getting up in the mornings, _every single morning_?”

He gets a cutting grin for that, gorgeous even beneath the layers of grime and bruises. “Less talk more robot-killing.”

Steve rolls his eyes, goes back to humming, smacks a handful of metallic annoyances against one of the still-intact walls.

"Song. I hate that song. Shut the fuck up," Bucky says mockingly.

"Nope," Steve says, as cheerfully as he can.

When the elevator stops, Bucky has a grumpy expression on his face, and Steve is laughing, because what just happened here, why was _Bucky_ here, _how_ , and _**wow**_.


	20. your name in lights, written in the night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Birthday present for [Keio](http://archiveofourown.org/users/keio).

He has to catch his breath after he clambers up onto the window sill, but once he’s got himself situated he can smile, and look out the window, look out at the happy faces and the streets strung up with red and white and blue bunting.

Laughter and whistling, the riotous barking of the next-door neighbors’ dog. He smiles and remembers finding it, no more than a skittish and wary pup, half-drowned and white-bellied in the gutter, tail and paws soaked with rainwater and grime; he remembers wrapping it in his shirt and taking it home to dry next to the only working radiator that they had. He’d caught quite a cold from that adventure, but Bucky had only looked at the dog and looked at him and - Steve thinks - hadn’t quite had the heart to tell him off.

It would have been a deserved thing. Steve smiles. If he’d gotten that scolding he’d have had the chance to gloat over it several times over. That bedraggled puppy is even now jumping up at Bucky, tail wagging like it’s going a thousand miles a minute. It barks loudly enough to shake the roofs down, happy, its tongue lolling out and making it look like it’s grinning.

Steve smiles, and reaches for the pencils. Half a dozen of them, new, and he doesn’t know how long Bucky saved up for them this time. All he knows is the bright smell of cedar and graphite, and the bright dust of shavings, and carefully he sharpens one to a broad point, and starts laying in lines.

Here is the shape of Bucky’s arm, leading the other children - older and younger - in a boisterous march. “Yankee Doodle”, and almost none of the voices are in tune, but the music is half laughter, too. One of the grandfathers from down the street swaggers past, dressed up as Uncle Sam, and unseen from his high perch Steve hollers happily at him, hollers along with the others.

The old man salutes the children, and the children salute him back, and then they hurry on.

Steve stares, because Bucky’s still standing in the street below, and he’s looking right up at him, and Steve doesn’t know what makes him salute his friend, but he does.

And Bucky lights up, grins and waves, and then he stands up straight and tall and handsome and salutes Steve back.

Then Bucky runs off to the tune of exploding firecrackers, and Steve grins down at the picture he’s creating on his paper, Bucky under the summer moon, under bright stars.

***

There’s dinner - Bucky comes home laden with plates of beef stew and a large cheeseburger for the two of them to share, which is something that they haven’t had to eat in a while. Coleslaw and half a loaf of bread. 

"Save room for dessert," Bucky says around a mouthful of vegetables, and he sprays crumbs when he speaks, and Steve rolls his eyes and throws a grubby napkin in his face.

"Dessert? You didn’t bring any in," Steve says, piling coleslaw onto his stew.

"That’s what you think."

Steve carefully tucks the leftovers away in their icebox. It’s a rare night when he doesn’t have to worry about breakfast, and he’s a little grateful, and not just because it’s the Fourth and they happen to have kind neighbors.

"I’m going next door, say goodnight to Charlie," Bucky says.

Steve nods, and clambers into bed. From the pillows he’ll have a good view of the sky. They’ve been hearing about a big fireworks display. He can’t stay out of doors for a long time, so this is as good a place as any to enjoy the show - better, since he has pillows and the lights on, so he can keep sketching.

A voice, singing, nearby. Slightly off-key.

"Happy birthday, Stevie," Bucky says, suddenly.

"I thought you’d gone to see the dog - " The words trail off. 

Cake, and a sparkler, and Bucky’s face lit up in sparking fire, in bright shattering temporary stars.


	21. you and me and the bass beat

Natasha laughs, and Sam is whispering to her, and even in the semigloom and the coruscating flash of lurid lights Bucky can see their entwined hands and he’s so over the part where he’s been accidentally third-wheeled. They’ve apologized. He’s told them they shouldn’t have to. It still happens. Life goes on.

But at the end of the minute Sam and Natasha have disappeared into a private room and - Bucky’s alone.

There has to be a bar around here somewhere, he thinks, and since he’s not paying for anything he might as well indulge himself.

He turns a corner, absent-mindedly, and promptly runs into a living, breathing, Adonis-hot brick wall.

Bucky’s down and he’s blinking up into concerned blue eyes and - Bucky blinks again. The brick wall - Adonis - _blue-eyed guy_ is dressed in nothing but a black bow tie and tiny, tiny sequined briefs.

He opens his mouth and not a damn sound comes out.

"Are you all right?" Adonis asks.

 _Yes no maybe I would like you to pick me up and throw me into a private room,_ Bucky thinks and doesn’t say. “’M fine,” he says, and plasters on a fake smile, his best fake smile, the one even Nat hesitates to call him out on.

"Okay. But your color’s a bit up. This place is an overheated death trap," Adonis says. "I keep telling the management they have to get the climate control fixed."

Bucky’s only hearing about one out of every three words. He thinks about throwing this guy into iced water and then pouncing in after him.

"Anyway, hi, I’m Steve."

"James Barnes," Bucky says, mostly flabbergasted. "But call me Bucky."

"Nice to meet you, Bucky."

And Steve _smiles_.

Holy shit, he’d thought Steve was hot the moment they collided - now Bucky’s left flailing and speechless at that lovely, lovely smile.


	22. this cake - is just a cake

Steve likes it when Bucky decides to do something around the house, because “doing something around the house” normally means “staying in the kitchen all day and filling the house with amazing smells” and, eventually, lunch or dinner or _something_ , always something wonderful and sometimes something new but. The point. Is that Bucky is a genius in the kitchen.

But Steve steps into the kitchen today and blinks at the music. Blinks at Bucky in a tank top and bright orange shorts. Blinks at the makings for -

"Black Forest cake," Steve says. He’s sure that other cakes require both kirsch and maraschino-soaked cherries, but he knows that one, and more importantly, he knows Bucky likes that particular cake.

Bucky laughs without turning around. He doesn’t stop moving around the counter. He also doesn’t stop humming along to the song playing in the kitchen.

"Should I be worried?" Steve asks as he crosses to the refrigerator. The cold orange juice tastes good. 

"Nah, you’re good," Bucky says, chuckling softly, as he keeps going. "Everyone else, well, let me think about that."

When the timer goes off, Steve admires the ease with which Bucky ices the cake. The cream is whipped into stiff peaks. The chocolate is grated into fine, fine slivers.

He can’t help but take a photo of the finished cake, and he sends it to Natasha for her Instagram.

"Want some?" Bucky asks.

"You know I never turn my nose up at your cooking," Steve tells him, proud to bursting, and Bucky lights up, looks at the perfect cake in his hands, and then glances back at Steve.

Bucky looks pleased with himself.


	23. what the cups meant

"Latest video’s up," Sam calls from the other room, and Steve grins and clicks out of his tabs and trots across the corridor, Natasha hot on his heels with the beer.

Steve lets Natasha get comfortable first, and she does that by stretching out across his lap and Sam’s. “You sure you don’t want to tell us what the two of you have been up to?” she asks, playfully, as she opens one of the beers.

"You’re about to _see_ ,” Steve says, poking her in the shoulder.

"Since when have we ever hated spoilers?" Sam asks.

"We like spoilers," Natasha says. "Sometimes we even need spoilers."

"Not today," Steve laughs.

The familiar opening tune cues up, as does the familiar freeze-frame montage, and Steve catches flashes of himself: his hand in shadow against a brilliant blue sky; his shoulder and part of his face in the backdrop of a selfie; his electric-orange running shoes next to a set of battered blue Chuck Taylors.

And then: “So there you were, guys, stuck watching reruns for two weeks,” says Bucky Barnes, the star of this YouTube video series. “I’m not sorry.” A quick glimpse of a smile, bright and amused and gently understanding all at the same time.

The show is called “How to be a better human being”, and it’s often silly, and it’s a great source of memes, but Steve likes the part where Bucky really does mean what that title says. He’s talked about self-care and safe spaces and fighting back against things like anxiety and awkwardness, but he never seems to condescend.

Steve knows why, knows Sam and Natasha know what’s going on behind the smile, and that’s why they’re all fans of the show.

"A vacation is - something that you use to get out of familiar spaces," Bucky says, and behind him is the orderly chaos of his kitchen, with neat stacks of jars and cans in the cupboards but mismatched kitchen tools and cutlery everywhere. "It’s a nice way to get some perspective on things. Things like life, the universe, and everything - but also things like raw fish. So guess where I went."

Bucky stumbles over the pronunciation of “Tsukiji Fish Market” just once, and Steve beams proudly, because even Bucky’s best efforts with the Japanese language had all been far more intelligible than his own.

The video ends on a shot of a set of three nested sake cups, and Natasha’s shout of, “You _didn’t_!” 

Steve laughs, and pats her shoulder. “We didn’t. But we will.”

"Congratulations, man," Sam says. "Though I should be killing you out of sheer envy. Not a lot of people get to go away for a proposal _and then_ go away for a honeymoon not long after.”


	24. the end is the beginning is the end

_Meet me at the park in forty minutes,_ is the message on Steve’s phone, and he stares at it for a moment before knocking next door. He needs advice. He needs a consult.

There are three women sitting around Natasha’s dinner table, and Steve almost cringes and backtracks - but it’s too late, Sharon has spotted him, and she waves him over with a grin and a raised eyebrow. “Hey, Steve, want some tea?”

"I wish I could ask for something stronger," Steve says, feeling a little sheepish as he toes off his sneakers at the door. Natasha has a no-shoes policy of some kind. Her floors are polished bare wood. 

"Ask and ye shall receive," Carol intones, winking, as she gets up and starts rummaging in Natasha’s cupboards.

"No, I mean, I wish I could drink but I probably shouldn’t," Steve says, and hands his phone over to Natasha.

Who reads the message still on the screen, raises her eyebrows, makes a face, and then rereads.

"Okay, if you look like that we definitely need booze," Sharon says, and she nods when Carol holds up a bottle of vodka. "Hit me, Danvers."

"Your boyfriend sent you this message," Natasha says, slowly. "Are you sure it’s him? Because - park. As in _a very public place_.”

"Now you know why I’m here." Steve shuffles his feet. He can’t sit down, and he won’t be able to keep still. He makes himself lean against the refrigerator. He tells himself that he’s not panicking.

When Carol joins him there and pats his shoulder sympathetically, he gives her his best strained smile.

"Forty minutes won’t be enough to clear the place," Sharon comments. "I suggest you hide your face, Steve. Got any ski masks handy?"

"In this heat, nope, he’d die of heatstroke within ten minutes, and then Bucky Barnes will be singing sad sappy laments and crash and burn," Natasha says.

"Thanks a lot, Nat," Steve says.

"You’re welcome."

At twenty minutes Steve wraps a scarf around his face and hopes for the best.

Bucky, of course, is standing barefaced and smiling in the middle of the park’s green.


	25. after-action report

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen to Night Fight (from the _Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon_ OST) [HERE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgr2wQiqBpw).
> 
> Some trigger warnings for injuries and the patching-up thereof.
> 
> Original inspiration from [HERE](http://lydiamartinis.tumblr.com/post/83125976820/the-quiet-moments-when-your-otp-is-all-banged-up).

Steve survives the firefight with a grand total of three scratches. There’s a long and nasty one scoring his back from shoulder to waist, and there’s a gouge in his face that he feels is already scabbing over, and there’s a shallow nick in the armor encasing his right leg. Only the first one hurts and that only as sort of an afterthought.

As soon as FitzSimmons give them the go-ahead for liftoff, as soon as the Quinjet is in the air, he unbuckles his seat belt and reaches for the oversized first-aid kit in its specialized compartment and heads to the back.

The Winter Soldier is not looking blankly into space as he had in previous fights.

The fact that he’s wearing a rather extravagant wince has Steve torn between amusement and concern, but all he does is sit next to him, and busy himself with the bandages and dressings.

Even in the low light of the Quinjet he can clean Bucky’s wound quickly and easily and efficiently. Steady click and clink of debris being pulled out of Bucky’s skin, tossed into a small plastic dish for later disposal.

The jet is abruptly thrown into turbulence. Steve pulls the tweezers away, and holds on to Bucky’s shoulder - and Bucky takes that hand in his metal one, tight and firm grip, and Steve kisses those cool and gleaming knuckles without really thinking about it.

“Feels kinda weird to be on the receiving end of this,” Bucky whispers after a moment. “I was always patching you up back then.”

Steve snorts softly. “Never did know how to pick my fights.”

“You’ve gotten better at it,” Bucky says. “I mean, now you take backup with you.”

Steve smiles as he winds sterile gauze around Bucky’s upper arm. “I got all kinds of people clamoring to be my backup, and they’re good people, don’t get me wrong.” He checks Bucky over with careful eyes, careful hands. He telegraphs his movements. He’s steady and non-threatening and gentle. “But, you know, begging their collective pardon - there’s still only one guy I’d trust to watch my back.”

Bucky smirks, one-sided and sweetly sharp. “You sure know how to flatter a guy.”

Steve nods, and keeps holding on to Bucky, and though the engine roars during landing he hears what Bucky says loud and clear.

“Until the end of the line,” he whispers back, once they’re alone, once they’re home.


	26. is it bright where you are?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angel names and correspondences from [this photoset](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/24463174720/the-avengers-as-avenging-angels-that-actually):
> 
> Steve = Michael, the perfect soldier  
> Bruce = Ezekiel, angel of death and transformation  
> Natasha = Raziel, keeper of secrets  
> Clint = Uriel, the eyes of Heaven
> 
> And the name I found to go with an angelic/fallen-angelic Bucky:
> 
> Bucky = Zeruel, _arm of God_ (!!!)
> 
> Inspiration taken from Brilcrist's art [here](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/91374761686/brilcrist-avenging-angels-au-character-series).

Michael stands, and the world freezes around him, and he walks around bullet trajectories and the blood flowing in the gutters, seeping into the stones, does not touch his bare feet.

Something is twisted about the fabric of this fight, something he’s been warned about. The Chorus had known of it before ever he did - Raziel and Uriel and Ezekiel singing in harmony, a dire verse, a foreseen verse.

So Michael has come to this battlefield and the star on his shield _shifts_ , changes into his cross. 

There is another presence in this place, like and yet unlike the others. He knows the members of the Chorus well, knows his own part and the parts that they have to play, and the presence here knows the song that they all do, but is singing differently. Is singing counterpoint to all the voices - except for one.

Except for Michael’s own.

A presence that knows the celestial rhythms but sings it with infernal intonation, perfectly harmonizing with Michael’s voice. 

Michael knows this presence.

And he crosses the battlefield, and he doesn’t put up his shield, nor does he draw the powerful flame of the sword that he carries with him.

Black wings where his own are white. A sword to match, drawn, and darkly aflame. Unruly hair, and a black cloth tied around the mouth. Blood-colored eyes, rich red and wary.

"I know you," Michael says, and he remembers a bridge. A celestial realm on one side and an infernal realm on the other. He remembers standing on this bridge and facing this presence, and the clash of their swords and shields, and the explosion of black feathers as the other presence had descended, had chosen its side, and taken up its new sword.

"And I you," the other presence says. "Once I fought at your side. Once I was your companion. Once I was closest to you. _Was._ ”

Michael nods. “Once.” 

"Have you come here to fight?"

"I come here to greet you. For you are still of the Chorus. And you sing my verse with me." And Michael gives the other presence its name. "Zeruel."

Zeruel’s black feathers, and his sword that is also his left arm.

Michael recognizes him, and the song trembles between them.


	27. what the sentry saw

He takes a deep breath of the icy, pine-edged night air, and immediately regrets it: a breath like winter’s claws reaching down his throat, freezing him from the inside out.

Jim Morita propels himself to his feet and hops up and down in place. He’d learned how to walk soundlessly when he was a little kid who got kicked around by his brothers and sisters until he learned to sneak after them and after the rare few treats they kept hidden in out-of-the-way pockets. The combat boots hadn’t really been any challenge, and he’s stupidly glad for them now, for them and for new thick socks, because Dugan is right:

This is a place to freeze your goddamn balls off.

"If you’re that cold," Jones mutters from his place next to the fire that was, in Jim’s considered opinion, entirely not doing its job of keeping anyone warm at all, "go take a damn walk. Make sure the others haven’t run off in the night again."

Okay, good point; the Cap’s still having fits about the group getting separated, and well he should since the last time that had happened they had very nearly made the very intimate acquaintance of big, big hunting cats: part sabertooth and all very hungry. He’d grinned while Cap chewed both Dernier and Barnes out, all the while hoping he never does anything to get that kind of heavenly wrath crashing down around his ears.

So after he fusses with his M3 and pulls his cap down more snugly, he sets off: and the crunch of snow under his feet is quiet and constant and makes him feel paranoid. Makes him think of hungry predators that aren’t them. Because yeah, they’re hunting HYDRA, but they’re also here in this forest where they don’t belong, and that makes them fair game for everything else.

He watches his feet and he clenches his jaw against the idea of chattering teeth, and he passes Dernier and Dugan and Falsworth and Barnes, all shoulder-to-shoulder and dead to the world.

A light snow begins to fall, and Barnes starts snoring quietly.

That leaves only Rogers unaccounted for, and Jim looks around and even, on a strange hunch, up into the dense overhang of branches knotted and locked together. Nothing there.

Then he rounds a tree and stops dead.

So the thing is, apparently someone back home’d fed Steve Rogers some kind of miracle and now he’s big and tall and completely preoccupied with kicking HYDRA ass.

But that means he also knows that the Cap used to be so skinny he’d disappear if he turned sideways, and he apparently still sleeps like he’s that runt, because Steve fucking Rogers is curled up in a crook of roots and he’s doing his level best to disappear behind that star-spangled shield.

Trying, Jim thinks, and utterly failing.

He takes that scene in - the soundless way the Cap breathes, the possessive grip on the shield, the way he’s turned himself towards the others.

Something to tell Barnes, then, when he takes the next shift on watch.


	28. shatter these rafters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen to _things we lost in the fire (live from queens’ college cambridge) - bastille + queens’ college choir & cambridge university chamber orchestra_ [HERE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=J90WFEiG_ME).

Steve drinks down the last of his tea, makes a face, puts the paper cup down on the beautifully tiled floor. Swirl of the dregs, a pattern that looks vaguely like a dog on the run and like a lopsided dragon.

He picks up his violin, runs skilled and reverent fingers over the strings, listens closely to the soft notes he coaxes from the beautiful old wood. The instrument is a gift. It’s a privilege to be able to play it. It was Dr Erskine’s constant companion, full of astonishing melody, of powerful voice. It’s Steve’s for today. He wants to meld with it, melt into its rhythms.

As he checks his bow and wipes the sweat from his throat the band comes in. Four men, and the one who stands at the furthest keyboard has his dark hair in a loose braid and is wearing dark blue eyeliner.

Steve swallows, hides the thrill of recognition in his contemplation of his feet. The man leading the band is Bucky Barnes, and Steve has been a fan of Bucky’s music almost from the very start, when it was all discordant untuned piano and growling hoarse lyrics.

Now Bucky and his band are international celebrities, and now Bucky and his band have come here to perform one of their hit singles, not quite unplugged but a cross between a symphony and the main stage at Lollapalooza.

"Take one," someone calls, and Steve smiles, nods at the others around him: string instruments interspersed with the pure range of the human voice.

Bucky, at his keyboard, ducks his head, smiles almost diffidently, and then - Steve’s looking right at him and Bucky meets his eyes, and nods, and begins to sing.


	29. unexpected courage

There are fingers threading through Stephanie’s hair, gentle and inexorable, and she makes a sound in the back of her throat and tips her head back, breathless and helpless.

Soft kisses up and down her neck, dipping briefly into the hollow between her collar bones. Teasing. Hot sweet pressure. She shivers, presses closer, barely has the breath to plead. "Becky. Becky, _please_."

"Please what?" Words whispered against her skin, cutting her off at the knees. Stephanie is grateful she’s been pinned up against the angle of the wall and the bookcase. Too warm, too much, too good.

"Don’t tease," Stephanie begs.

One of the hands in her hair starts sliding down. Slow. Maddening. That hand traces her shoulder and the planes of her back, and stops just above her waist. Soft words against her mouth. "Can I?"

"Yes," and she doesn’t know what she’s saying yes to, here in this room, with the neighbors a scant few inches of fragile wall away, with the windows wide open to let in the Brooklyn afternoon. Not that she cares. It’s Becky. She’d do anything for Becky. She has no words for how true that is.

"Steph," Becky says, and she says it again and again, between kisses, until she sinks to her knees and presses her cheek to Stephanie’s thigh.

"You’re gonna have to tell me to stop now," Becky says, suddenly.

Stephanie blinks. Red haze in her eyes. She looks down, and she’s frightened. "Becky - "

"If you don’t tell me to stop, Steph, I - you should be doing this in a bed, with someone you really like, with someone who’ll do this right - "

"All of that happens to be - you," Stephanie mutters. "Except for the bed part. You’re not a bed." Becky is the person who shares her bed, who holds her through the nightmares and the fevers and the sleepless hours. "You’re everything else. You’re the one I like. You’re the one I want. I dream about you kissing me, and I really want to touch you - "

Stephanie shies back, shocked again, when Becky rears up to her feet and leans in, blanching and blushing in rapid succession. "Steph."

"The things I want you to do to me, Becky. And the things I want to do with you. I have a list." Stephanie does.

"Yeah?" A smile, bravado, hope and a beautiful yearning in Becky’s eyes.

"Yeah." And this time, Stephanie kisses her, kisses beautiful brave blushing Becky.


	30. two left...feet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case you haven't seen Guardians of the Galaxy, I will preemptively warn for spoilers.
> 
> Listen to Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now" [HERE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6Q3mHyzn78).

Music.

Loud music.

Really loud music, loud enough to drown out the whirring and clanging and banging and smashing that was the usual background music of Tony Stark’s life. (Well, unless it was things going boom.)

And the music sounded like it was all out of some nightmare mix of mullets and _Footloose_ and telephones with spiral-coiled cables.

"Stay there, I got to check this out," he told the bots - DUM-E tried to walk out the door with him, as usual, and he glared the bot back towards its charging point, as usual - and he took off his grease-stained gloves and said, "Okay, JARVIS, what gives, who told you you could play these awful songs?"

"I received a request from some of our visitors, sir, and I am merely being hospitable. A good host."

"Never taught you that," Tony snarked.

"Perhaps that is just as well," JARVIS began, and then - _CRASH_.

"Okay, this better be something you can explain - " And Tony gave up on words and started for the elevator. "Get one of the armors ready - "

"I don’t think that will be necessary, sir - "

"Do it," Tony said, and then the elevator slid to a smooth stop and he dropped into a sort of fighting crouch, braced himself for impact, and clicked his fingers at the doors to open them - 

[Tiffany?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6Q3mHyzn78) _Was he hearing Tiffany?_

Crack of impact on the floors, feet and paws jumping around, arms and tails waving in the air, and in the center of it all - 

"I AM GROOT," the huge tree said, with a noise at the end that sounded like cracking and creaking - but was that a smile? Oh god, he looked absolutely terrifying, and something was crawling and bouncing up and down on its head and shoulders and - Tony blinked, recognized that accent that never came from Earth.

Rocket Raccoon. Groot. They were dancing. On the common floor of Avengers Tower.

Tony looked around for the only possible culprit. Culprits.

And Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes danced past him, steps he only vaguely recognized from the old movies, definitely not what you should be doing to Tiffany songs, because were they jitterbugging or swing dancing? Something that involved their hands clasped together and their feet moving lightly, gracefully, rapidly. Smiles on their faces.

This was happening. Tony slunk to the bar, looked at the grins on the others’ faces, and poured himself a stiff drink.


	31. someday, when I’m awfully low

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen to Ella Fitzgerald's cover of "The Way You Look Tonight" [HERE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OT2nr8uauU).

It’s been a long day.

It’s been a long _week_ , maybe. Getting Carol Danvers fully on the team takes time. She has a real instinct for being a leader. She has tactics on the brain, and Steve has to run to keep up with her mind sometimes, and that’s both a relief and something to adjust to, and he’s been having a rough week and - yeah. He’s just staggered back onto his floor. He actually does feel like he’s been run through a rough tumble-dry cycle. 

Steve Rogers does not make it back into his bed. Steve Rogers ends up on his couch. (Which, thanks to Tony, is a very big and deep and comfortable couch indeed, the best money can buy. It is also very red.) 

Steve only has enough left in him to make sure that the shield is close within reach, to ask JARVIS to draw the curtains, to half-lock the floor down. 

"Exceptions, Captain Rogers?"

Steve mumbles something that might sound like “You know which ones” in response, and then - he’s out. His body _demands_ he sleep, and it rolls him over into blessed unconsciousness, no time to reach for an afghan or a throw pillow - 

He sleeps until he has to wake up, until the same body that demanded sleep now switches over to demanding food and water and likely a shower at some point. He’s a creature of this body of his, of the serum, and sometimes he thinks wistfully about being small and overlooked but he sure doesn’t miss the near-death experiences, so he struggles awake, _struggles_ being the operative word, because where’d the blanket come from, for starters?

He’s warm and he’s settled into a nice dip in the couch cushions and there is quiet music nearby, a voice that he knows well, humming, perhaps not just familiar with the words yet.

_Charming, never ever change / keep that breathless charm / won’t you please arrange it / because I love you just the way you look tonight_

And the hand that lands on Steve’s shoulder is cushioned by a leather glove, firm and unyielding.

He can’t help but smile, and he’s sure it makes him look like a sap, because he’s smiling before he can even open his eyes. “Bucky?”

"Yeah, I’m here, I just got back - Sam dropped me off."

"Do I want to know?" Steve says, and he yawns, fights to sit up, and he’s grateful for Bucky’s steady strength that pulls him upright.

Bucky’s a sight, he really is, damp clean hair and a healing bruise on his cheekbone, and a dark brown stain on his mouth that smells sweet and earthy. Sweat pants and a pajama top, only partly buttoned up, which might be explained by the bandages wrapped around his right arm and shoulder.

Steve doesn’t waste time asking what happened to him - he just gets to his feet and smiles and says, “Hot chocolate first. I know you found my stash. Then food. And we can talk. You should meet Carol, she’s saved everyone half a dozen times by now.”

"Sounds interesting." And then Bucky starts humming again.

This time Steve sings the words for him. He likes the song, and favors Ella Fitzgerald’s version, and he asks JARVIS to cue it up now.

Syrup-slow and sugar-sweet, the words float up around them gentle and insistent, and Steve smiles, takes the mug from Bucky’s other hand, and puts both of his hands on Bucky’s hips.

"I like the way you think," Bucky drawls, looking pleased, and Steve smiles and closes his eyes when Bucky leans in, so they’re cheek to cheek, and Bucky’s arms are around his neck, and this is a really nice way to rest, Steve thinks.


	32. me and you and these steps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Photo inspiration from [HERE](http://vintagegaymen.tumblr.com/post/89818761142).
> 
> Yo-yo Ma joins an ensemble of performers in the Libertango [HERE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUAPf_ccobc&); Wao Youka and Hanafusa Mari dance to a different arrangement of the Libertango [HERE](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/74859128179/ninemoons42-nekotachi-myhearttheastronaut).

There is a real contrast between the fiery challenge in Steve’s eyes and the almost delicate way in which he toes off his socks and shoes, and Bucky slides one foot forward onto the black-and-white check of the floor and doesn’t feel cold at all.

And he has to hand it to Steve, who more than steps up to him, head held high: he gets right into Bucky’s personal space and leans in, so they’re almost cheek to cheek without needing to be prompted. No fear in Steve, no hesitation at all. He could almost be the music all by himself, without a single note having to be played.

Bucky turns out his other foot, steady and poised to move. He puts his hand just above the small of Steve’s back.

"Do it," Steve says, and there’s a click in the corner of the room and the soft whir of the record spooling up, long-ago scratch and - 

Bucky only has time for a quick breath before he’s advancing and Steve is retreating, their steps perfectly matched, tracing out a long sweeping curve on the floor before Steve’s hand curves around his neck and Bucky catches him at shoulder and hip, spinning him forcefully around and then most of the way into a dramatic dip.

(And Steve goes so easily, bends back sweetly and he always looks like he’s in full control of himself, even when the tango is such a drug - )

Accordion and piano, the steady rich voice of the cello, and Bucky keeps his eyes wide open, determined to miss not a single second of the way Steve moves with him, all the way till they get to the complicated maneuver of ankle against knee, of stepping into the tight spaces between each other’s feet, of heel-and-toe and Steve turning away from him, only to be whirled back into him, kicking out gracefully along the way.

The music speeds up, and Bucky daren’t breathe, not when Steve’s dancing with his eyes fixed on Bucky, not when he’s holding on to Steve at the waist and at the hand, and Bucky feels like _he’s_ the one being led into the frenetic finale, the last dizzying exchange of steps before the music stops dead - 

Steve is somehow both standing on his own two feet _and_ is plastered against Bucky’s front, and he can see the sweat trickling down Steve’s cheek, the proud thin line of Steve’s mouth, and Bucky looks away first and damns himself for it, but it doesn’t really feel like eating crow, not when Steve smiles, small and triumphant, for all he has to look up to look into Bucky’s eyes.


	33. he’s the wind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by an awesome piece of Bucky fan art by Dian M.Z. [HERE](http://dianmz.tumblr.com/post/93284937027/doodle).

He’s running, he’s on the move, and he must look like something fierce, something strange, something terrible, because people are falling out of his way, pushing at each other, and his footsteps call up loud echoes from the surrounding stone and there is a flash of bright billowing white against the merciless blue sky, far away, but he can reel it in, he just has to run, he just has to keep moving, one step in front of the other -

Weight on his arm. He blinks. The only thing he’s carrying is a shield. He can’t turn back now. He can’t stop. He can’t even blink or he’ll lose his quarry, the shape leaping from wall to roof up ahead of him, stark crimson star on white. He should have thought about weapons. He should have been carrying his swords. Instead he has a shield, round and heavy and he’d only have one chance with it, white star on blue - 

Steven leaps from one rooftop to another and at the very apex of the next jump he somehow manages to throw the shield with all his strength.

Dull glint of reflected sunlight off an armored shoulder, an arm covered in overlapping plates, and Steven reels in shock as though he’d caught the shield itself, all that flying momentum, and the man in the white cloak has Steven’s shield, caught, as though it were possible to stop something so heavy so easily.

Shadowed blue eyes, like midnight and like the depths of a well, blank and cold, staring at Steven, and - the man in the white cloak twists, throws, and Steven has no time to dodge the shield as it hurtles back towards him.

Familiar, familiar, he’s seen those eyes before, seen that ease and that power, and the shield hits and Steven goes down, but not without burning that face into his mind, the face of the man bearing the red star.


	34. I never made promises lightly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen to a live version of Fields of Gold [HERE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C3ECu86mFg).

Waking up is not like being plunged into ice. He knows what that’s like, and this is far more painful, though it’s the necessary kind. It might even be the welcome kind.

No, it’s like looking over one’s shoulder after a long hard walk and finding that every step had been over burning coals. Bits and pieces of thorn in the ashes. Pain, over and over again, pain that was healing and pain that would still scar him, though these would, he hoped, make better scars than the ones connecting him to the metal of his arm.

So Bucky wakes up from the years of that infernal hell-made machine, wakes up from the years of the rubber guard in his mouth and the unholy mess of drugs forced down his veins, and he’s sitting up in bed and there’s a lamp lit next to him and he’s alone, and there’s a glowing outline of light to mark the door out of this room.

A room of his own, and the freedom to close and open the door as he pleased, and careful careful conversations with Steve and Natalia - Natasha - and Sam, and what wakes him up is the soft rhythm of someone picking out a tentative song on a piano. 

Even when the hands have changed, have turned into hands that help and hands that bear up and hands that fight, he’d still hear that delicacy, that yearning touch: and so he untangles himself from restless sleep and blankets and dresses, and he pauses before he opens that door and then he opens it all at once, with his left hand.

The soft music is almost familiar and mostly unknown, and he doesn’t hear the voice until he can see the piano. Broad shoulders and a thin t-shirt and close-cropped hair. 

Steve is not just playing the piano. He’s singing, too. What a song it is. He’s singing about fields and sun and _will you stay with me, will you be my love,_ and before Bucky can think about it he says, “Yes,” and he finds it in himself to cross the remaining distance between him and Steve.

Who looks up and, red bright patch in his cheeks, says, “I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

“You woke me up, but it’s the good kind,” Bucky says. He can talk. The words are rusty and rough around the edges, but they’re his words. They’re his, and it feels good to speak them out loud, even if they are still minefields now as they had been then. “I - I’m sorry, Steve.”

Steve blinks. “For what?”

Bucky swallows and squeezes the words out. “For everything. I remember. Every single thing. Everything that I did. Everything that was done to me.” He closes his eyes, clenches his hands into fists. “I’m not entirely - me - not any more. I couldn’t still be me after all that.”

“That makes two of us,” Steve says. 

The thing is, Bucky believes him. Steve in Brooklyn and Steve in the war, and Steve above the Potomac and this Steve next to him on the piano bench: they’re all related to each other, same heart, same damned eyes, but none of them are any of the others, and what he’s got now is Steve as he is now, and - “I believe you,” Bucky says.

Steve doesn’t smile at that, though he does wrap his arms around Bucky, and Bucky goes, gratefully.

And then, eventually, Bucky puts his arms around Steve, too, and that’s a relief, something he’s been needing, something he inexplicably has.

Steve starts humming.

“Sing me that song you were just playing,” Bucky says.


	35. simple and clean

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original inspiration from the first prompt in [THIS LIST](http://thelockwolf.tumblr.com/post/95305316510/met-doing-laundry-at-2am-college-au-accidentally).

Vibrations traveling through Bucky’s pillow, insistent quiet buzz, and he opens his eyes from a dream of trigonometry to the cramped cracked ceiling of his dorm room, and he might know why he’s awake but that doesn’t mean that he has to like it.

Laundry, _ugh_.

A roll of quarters and the small mesh bag that Natasha had foisted off on him from somewhere, and while it is useful he just won’t tell her - but it’s got the little plastic packets and bottles he needs and the last thing he does before he picks up the overflowing basket in the corner of the room is throw on a jacket over his ragged shirt and pajama bottoms, because he’s cold and he doesn’t like being cold and the basement of the building tends to be a place where he can actually see his breath settle in frost and wisps. _Ugh._

He’s still more than halfway down the last flight of steps when he starts hearing things, and - seriously? Someone else is doing laundry now? Annoyance prickling under his skin, contributing to the goosebumps, and sulkily Bucky thumps down the rest of the way, grumbling and he doesn’t know who or what he’s grumbling at, but it’s just - after midnight there’s no one else to run into when he has to do this, and he’s learned to like it, and - conversation is awkward.

A long shadow and a pair of broad shoulders and - Bucky blinks, tries to recalculate the geometry of the human body, because the man who’s whistling softly to himself next to the dryers has a very weirdly attractively narrow waist and - that doesn’t make much sense, biologically or mathematically speaking, does it?

He pads past the man’s own loaded laundry basket and starts sorting his whites and coloreds and - he knows what the man’s whistling. He can’t help but rumble along under his breath: _how am I gonna be an optimist about this_ , and he changes “optimist” to “octopus” because Clint sings the song that way just to fuck with everyone who knows Bastille, and before he knows it the other man is laughing softly.

"Now that you’ve sung it that way I can’t get ‘octopus’ out of my head."

Bucky yawns, grins, and drops the lid on the washing machine, presses the necessary buttons, before he says, “Apparently it happened to them in real life.”

"I’m not surprised."

Bucky sighs, yawns again, and this time the other man yawns at him as well. That’s got to be a little bit of a consolation, right, especially when the man grins and looks sheepish and, god help Bucky, pretty.

He shrugs and turns to face the other man and says, “Okay, who taught you to do your laundry at the ass-end of midnight?”

"I’ve been doing it that way for years," is the answer. "I just exchanged a packed apartment building for a packed dorm, you know? Brooklyn, and all that."

Bucky laughs quietly. “And you speak my language, or at least the one I was born with. Haven’t been back in a while.” How had he not noticed the drawl? “What’s a bridge rat like you doin’ in a basement like this?”

The blond laughs, and at the end of it Bucky is both grinning and has been presented with an outstretched hand. “My laundry, what does it look like? And I’m Steve. Steve Rogers. Um, History and Gender Studies if that’s at all relevant.”

Bucky grins, and takes that offered hand. “Bucky Barnes. Electrical and electronic engineering. So, you come here often?”


	36. breakfast at midnight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Watch the Cooking with Dog episode in which Chef makes Soft-Cooked Omurice [HERE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUIMLWwWbwk).

Steve is woken up in the middle of the night by a sharp twinge of pain in his shoulders, and for a moment he has no idea where he is: is he still staring up into the featureless shields around Dr Erskine’s machine? Is he waking in that mocked-up OSS-but-really-SHIELD recovery room? Is he alive? Is he dead? Shifting shadows across the blank ceiling, and then - a sudden blast of almighty sound, some errant delivery truck wheeling towards the Brooklyn Bridge, and in the sharp encompassing hush afterwards Steve hears - 

Another breath. Not his. There’s someone else in the apartment. Soft _whisk whisk_ that makes him think of metal against metal. _Knives_ \- and he bolts up, gasps, clutches at the bandages still wrapped around his chest and upper arm. They’d dug a massively fragmented bullet out of him and that’s the reason why he’s laid up now. Blood on Sam’s steady hands and Natasha holding hemostats, so like and unlike battlefield patch-ups in the mountains of Europe - Steve swallows past the bile and the memories and lurches to his feet. The shield is an unimaginable weight. He has to settle for the pistol Sharon’d insisted he keep with him. 

Kitchen. Clattering. His pots and pans? Who is here - 

Tall dark shadow, dark hair scraped back from a stubbled chin and bruised cheekbones, dark eyes surrounded by darker rings.

Steve can at least recognize the silverflash of reflected light off that left arm. He has no idea what name to use. He instinctively cringes back from the impersonal words: Soldier. Asset. “Um,” is all that comes out of his mouth.

“Who got you?” the shadow asks with Bucky’s voice, raspy, rough, unused. “I can go get them after this.”

“What is _this_ exactly,” Steve says, and he sits down warily and he’s so tired.

“Food. Which you apparently need more than I do. I was going to eat and run. Good thing I got enough to share. Orange juice?”

“Yes, please,” Steve says, and he watches as rice is tossed in a pan with peas and corn and carrots and bits of - Steve sniffs - bacon. It all smells good. His stomach rumbles.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re pushy, you’re hungry,” says the man in Steve’s kitchen. Eggs and butter in another pan, and the bowl that is placed before him has a spoon in it and a sheet of cooked omelette draped over a mound of hot fragrant rice. 

Bemused, Steve eats, and watches his visitor eat. Neat economical movements. “I can look after that,” and the man gestures at him with his spoon, “and don’t worry, I’ll pick up after myself. You stay here and rest. Got things to catch up on.” A brief ghost of a smile. “You’re on the list, but I gotta make sure we’re safe, first. You understand?”

Steve nods, slow with disbelief.

“Okay. Eat up. There’s more in the pan.”

Steve eats. This is familiar and also the precise polar opposite of familiar.

He doesn’t know when he falls asleep again, but he’s not surprised that he wakes up in his bed in the morning, and there’s a neat tupperware of leftovers in the refrigerator. A label of torn-off duct tape on top. The initials _BB_.

Steve doesn’t lock the door that night.


	37. sweet oblivion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by an Imagine Bucky art post: click [HERE](http://imaginebucky.tumblr.com/post/97144408371/imagine-bucky-soon-after-steve-finds-him-getting-his) to view.

Bucky shows up on Steve’s doorstep at about half past eleven in the evening. He looks like he’s been fighting a war. Blood dried on his hands and crusted in his hair. Makeshift bandages everywhere. He’s carrying three pistols that Steve can see, plus a crudely cut-down shotgun, _plus_ what looks like one of Sam’s own SMGs. There might be grenade pins still hanging from one of the belts. There’s a hole in one of Bucky’s boots.

Steve takes all of this in and the first thing he does is _ask no questions_. Well, one. “Do you want to come in?”

Bucky nods, once, after a very _long_ moment that sees the night sky cloud over and threaten sullen misting rain.

"Okay." Steve steps back. Holds his breath. Waits for Bucky to step over the threshold.

He’s surprised and pleased when Bucky takes his hand and uses him to pull himself into the apartment.

"Hungry," is the next word out of Bucky’s mouth, followed by a creaky rusting "Please."

"On it," Steve says, brisk and (he hopes) reassuring. Simple things, he thinks, easy to digest. He heats some leftover broth and looks around for the last slice of plain white bread. At the last minute, he makes a poached egg and puts it on another small plate.

Bucky eats everything and asks for more, and Steve smiles and passes him a cup of plain yogurt. 

"Spoiled," Bucky says.

"I promise it’s not - try it," Steve says.

Bucky dips a finger in the yogurt and sticks it into his mouth - and the next thing Steve knows, Bucky eats it all up, no spoon required.

"More?"

Bucky nods.

Steve has to get up and turn away.

He looks back just in time to see Bucky nod off, then wake up and scowl and scrub at his eyes. Familiar and strange movements. His left arm picks up the light of the kitchen and throws it off at strange angles.

"Come on," Steve says, and hands Bucky the next cup of yogurt. "You can eat that in bed if you like."

"Okay."

Steve leads him to his own bedroom. Blue sheets. Steve gets a comforter from one of the closets, and throws it over the pillows.

Next to him, Bucky undresses, grimacing all the while. Another gun falls out of the holster above his boot. When he’s down to a ripped-up pair of briefs he faceplants into the pillows, and Steve watches him burrow into the blanket and comforter, slow and labored. He sleeps with one arm under his pillow. That’s a sight Steve never expected to see again.

"I’ll be here," he promises Bucky, softly, and the answer he gets is a quiet but unmistakable snore.


	38. she’s a fire in the sky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on the prompt "3am and the fire alarm in our apartment complex just went off let me lend you my jacket while we wait on the sidewalk" from [HERE](http://puppetamateur.tumblr.com/post/93292699757/okay-but-consider-these-oh-my-god-im-so-sorry-my). 
> 
> Written mostly to [THIS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwWLpXuqAjk) cover of the Foo Fighters' "Everlong".

Becca smiles, and it feels like she’s a little bit separated from the rapidfire notes and the fluid song that she’s coaxing into being, but here are her hands and they are moving so well, and it all feels so right. Music to fill up the night, if anyone else were listening to it. She’s got a keyboard and a set of really good headphones and she can hear every note, every rest, and there’s something good about this particular run-through. She’ll have to duplicate it for next time, when she hits the Record button, so she can save the whole thing onto her flash drive and let Sharon and Sam and Natasha listen to it - 

A high piercing cry, a sharp shriek, and Becca Barnes knows that sound. Knows it like she knows her heart’s suddenly dropped all the way down to the floor, like she knows the yawning pit of endless fear that opens up around her stomach and chews at her nerves.

Fire alarm.

Jacket from the back of the chair. Money and keys and another flash drive into her pockets. She loses several minutes she doesn’t have to unplugging the whole unwieldy weight of her keyboard and coiling up its cables. She stumbles for the door, panic a steady crescendo gripping her heart. Past the elevator, out the fire escape and down. She’s on the third floor; she doesn’t have far to go.

Footsteps above her, faster, skittering. Wheezing breaths. High and whistling. Not a good sound.

Becca looks back once she’s out of the building and across the street. Steady trickle of nervous people, sleep-crumpled and beyond startled. A girl muttering to her restive dog. A mother holding her child close. Two men carrying several duffels between them. 

The last person out the fire door coughs as she fetches up onto the sidewalk next to Becca’s feet. Striped PJs, dirty hands. She’s clutching a stack of notebooks and a small zippered case to her chest. 

She’s not wearing a jacket.

Becca looks at her, looks at her shaking shoulders, and takes off her jacket.

“Is there really a fire?” someone in the crowd asks.

“If it’s a false alarm I’m gonna kill whoever pulled the fucking thing,” one of them men mutters.

Becca agrees, and drops her jacket next to the shivering girl.

“Thanks," says the aforementioned shivering girl. “But what about you?"

Becca hugs her keyboard and shuffles her feet. “I’ll be okay.”

“Come sit with me,” the shivering girl, now wearing Becca’s jacket, says.

“Okay.”

They’re warm, together, somehow.

It’s a false alarm. The sigh of relief is collective and profound.

The shivering girl says, “Thank god. I had a lot of posters in my room.”

“Same here,” Becca says. Some unknown instinct makes her add, “Do you want something hot to drink? I could use something after all the excitement.”

The smile she gets does not shiver at all. Steady bright startling. “Yes. Thank you.” A pause. Becca helps her to her feet. “I’m Stella,” the shivering girl says.

“I’m Becca,” Becca tells her. 

She winds up recording the song with Stella watching, wide-eyed and appreciative.


	39. bundled up

Of _course_ Steve gets home from a mission with Bruce and Clint to Manhattan covered in snow and slush, and he shivers irritably as the cold creeps into the rents and tears of his uniform and fuck it, the others won’t mind and won’t care that he’s being rude. He’s the first out of the Quinjet and the first into the elevator back into the Tower, and he answers JARVIS with a grunt and he’s preoccupied with shuffling his feet to try and find some kind of warmth.

There’s a pile of blankets on the couch. He can hear the pile breathing. No way of knowing who’s been practicing the fine art of burrito-ing unless he gets closer, and he’s interested in precisely not that. Steve makes a beeline for the shower and groans in relief when the hot water comes gushing out. He stays in there well past the point of getting wrinkly fingertips.

He grabs some thermal underwear, grabs a pair of track bottoms, and then he almost smiles when he heads for the cabinet in which he keeps his collection of sweaters. Some of them are nice and classy, gifts from Pepper and Carol, lovely bulky knitted things. The rest is a hodgepodge of kitsch and crazy patterns and garish colors. For some reason those weird sweaters feel warmer.

And then Steve comes up short and surprised because one of his favorite blue sweaters is missing: the one with the reindeer and the snowmen on the front, and the huge tree on the back. It’s nowhere in the neat piles. 

He frowns, and settles for one of the red ones, a gift from Sam with propeller planes marching across the chest, and he goes to investigate the pile of blankets, but before that he brews some coffee and hunts through his kitchen for sandwich fixings.

Huh. The bread is brand new. The marshmallows, the apples, they weren’t there last time.

He glances over his shoulder. He can see the pile of blankets and it is moving. It might be snoring very faintly.

Steve smiles, shakes his head, goes to get another blanket.

Two mugs on the coffee table: he puts the apples and the cheese and the bread down, too, and then a metal arm - wrapped in a garish green cozy - flails out of the pile in his direction.

He’d expected Bucky to be wearing the missing blue sweater - it turns out Bucky’s been clinging to it, been drooling and snoring on it, and okay, he can do that, he should do that, he’s absolutely allowed to do that.

But Steve is already planning to steal one of Bucky’s favorite hats, or maybe he’s planning to steal the whole lot, because he can’t let the sweater-napping go.

Bucky’s other hand emerges from the blanket pile. Steve holds on to that one.


	40. home for the holidays

It’s a long way back to the land of the living, a long slog back from shivering and ice piercing every thought and every breath, but Steve finally manages it, far too much grit in his eyes and a brief respite of unclogged breaths. The faraway chime of ringing bells and caroling rhythms, voices rising and falling, not always in harmony, warm and enthusiastic all the same, despite the worry and the constant ballast of echoing war-drums, dark news from across the ocean.

His hand is the warmest part of him: the hand that is gently caught in both of Bucky’s. There is gray in his hair and Steve fights hard to quash the guilt that scalds his throat. Tales of Bucky’s mother going gray at an early age, and photographs of Bucky’s father’s salt-and-pepper hair, incongruous against youthful suits and nuptial flowers. It’s in Bucky’s very blood, and there had been resignation and scowls as Bucky’d gotten ready for one night out or another, always agonizing over whether to keep the offending light strands or not.

So Steve can’t really claim to be the only cause of the silver in Bucky’s hair, but he can’t help but feel softly repentant, and he strokes that sleep-creased forehead gently, apologetically.

“Mmphgf,” Bucky’s sigh, inarticulate, and that is followed by pressure and movement. Steve squeezes back as Bucky holds on to him more tightly. “Hi," Bucky slurs, most of the way to awake. “Fever broke last night. I’m glad you finally got to sleep easy.”

Steve presses his lips together against the threatening relief, the grateful sob. “Wouldn’t have done it without you.” He remembers, vaguely, broth and a sponge bath and strong tea. Bucky’s reading voice, soft and clear and steady. He smiles, and knows it’s an unsteady smile, and it’s okay for Bucky to see that.

“Every year like clockwork, huh,” and if the answering smile is lopsided and shadowed with pain it’s still a smile. Real relief in Bucky’s eyes. Steve’s torn between basking in that smile and feeling guilty about its ragged edges, and he settles for opening his arms to Bucky, settles for pulling him close. 

“I’m here. I’m okay. Just in time for Christmas.”

“Yeah.” A single word, cracked around the edges. Neither of them looking at the pressed and starched uniform in the corner of the room. 

Steve presses a kiss into the silver in Bucky’s hair.


	41. you'll be safe here

It’s when the nights start to run together in a miasma of fever-fears and falling snow that Bucky finally gathers up what few words he’s got left, what little strength he still has, and knocks on a generic door from which a fading wreath hangs.

A flash of recognition, a flash of something that he will only be able to name as _trust_ long after the fact. Broad shoulders hunched over with a not-dissimilar pain, and lines in a face.

This is Steve now, Bucky thinks, and this is not the skinny Steve whom he remembers when he _can_ manage to remember anything from before the Alps, before Zola and HYDRA and cryofreeze, but the pain and the gentleness and the acceptance in those blue eyes are still as unfathomable as the depths of the winter sky.

The bed is actually three mattresses in a neat stack, pushed into a corner of a clean room. Bucky appreciates the implications of possible safety, even as he can’t stop himself from noting that there are working locks on the door and a barred window. It should have been one hell of a mixed message, but he takes Steve at his word: “Here, if you want to stay here, you’ll be safe - but if you need to run, need to leave, need to close the door - you can do all that, too. Whatever you want.”

And, last and most important: “I’ll be here.”

Bucky remembers to nod, before he falls to his knees next to the bed, before he falls face-first into the crisp scents of warmth and pressed creases and almost-pine.

A soft chuckle behind him. Withdrawing footsteps.

He’ll find Steve later, and trail after him, and listen to him.

He moves too cautiously, too carefully. He hurts, and not just inside his head. Chilblains on his hands. Somehow he unfolds one of the blankets. Its edges are finished with machine-neat stitches. 

The blanket is so warm and so soft and he cries, gratefully.


	42. I’ve slept in stranger beds

The door gives way after just a moment’s jimmying. A faint memory of worry, of concern: _this place should be better secured._

_He should be safer._

But the tail-end of that thought’s caught up in wry weary bitterness: after all, isn’t he himself the reason why the person living in this apartment is in mortal danger? Bullets embedded in the drywall and the blood of a one-eyed man on the floor. He’d pulled that trigger; he’d almost taken that life.

No one’s home to hear him stride through the rooms. He’s so tired he’s bent over. His leg still throbs where he’d been grazed by a lucky shot. Spots and sparks in his vision. 

Beds. Rooms. The person who lives here sleeps in the eastern bedroom, the bed angled to catch sunlight and warmth and the rush of people and cars passing by. The eastern bedroom has an attached bathroom.

He’s fatigued but he’s still scanning. The habit ingrained in him by the stink of a gun after it’s been fired, by the silverflash of a knife in mid-throw. Pale tiles, indeterminate in the shadows, and a shower stall in textured glass.

Next to the shower stall is a softly gleaming tub. Smooth cool under his flesh fingertips. It’s larger than he expected, perhaps because the person who lives here is still just a little taller than he is. 

He half-falls and half-collapses into the empty, dry tub with relief. He groans softly and the tiles reflect his voice back to him. The tub warms up faster than he’d expected: it’s actually comfortable after a few minutes. It is nothing like the cryo chamber, and it is nothing like the chair, and the sides of the tub slope away from him, somehow protective.

He closes his eyes, and he falls asleep.

*

Steve finds Bucky, or the Winter Soldier, or both or neither, in his bathtub, sleeping heavily, hands clenched in defensive fists. Quiet snores and healing wounds. He knows, somehow, that his visitor needs to be left alone. The time for talking will be later, if it ever even comes.

That’s the first night.


	43. "Bucky's in trouble, must be Tuesday again,"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a meme on Tumblr: Send me the first half of a sentence and I'll finish it in a ficlet.
> 
> This line was supplied by keire-ke.

"Bucky’s in trouble, must be Tuesday," and the words were magnificently garbled around pepperoni and cheese and - _what_. What was Clint doing, putting greens on a pizza? Okay, the greens were jalapeno peppers and Steve was not exactly averse to the stuff - it’s just - he’d wanted to eat this particular pizza too. 

He had to content himself with pulling off his gloves and stepping out of his boots and then going to retrieve the loaf pan from the communal fridge: Bruce had gone on one of his baking binges and passed him a particularly good batch of banana-chocolate-chip bread. “Milk?”

"Yeah, look in the other fridge," Clint mumbled. And: "You’re not interested in what your boyfriend’s currently up to?"

Steve rolled his eyes and poured himself a tall glass of milk, and went back to the table. The chair creaked alarmingly under his weight. “I’m interested, but until he calls for backup, I’m staying put.” His stomach chose that moment to grumble, loudly.

"And also, food," Clint said, tossing his crust over his shoulder. It was only then that Steve saw he’d brought Lucky with him: the dog was little more than a dark blur hurtling off into the next room.

"Yes. Food." The bread went down quite easily, and Steve relished the rich sweet grit of chocolate on his teeth. 

"So you’re not interested in finding out he took that fucking rocket launcher from the armory?"

Instead of replying to Clint, Steve said, “JARVIS, you have eyes on the Winter Soldier?”

"He is not precisely working on his stealth techniques at present, Captain Rogers."

"Translation, he’s blowing shit up," Clint said. "News at 11."

"Record and send me the video, the usual," Steve said, and went to rummage for the sandwich makings.

(Bucky came in looking like he’d been rolling around in volcanic ash. Steve dropped him unceremoniously into the massive bathtub in their quarters.)


	44. the letter is still lying on the table

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a meme on Tumblr: Send me the first half of a sentence and I'll finish it in a ficlet.
> 
> This line was supplied by yensasha.

"The letters are still on the table, honestly, I wasn’t born a neat freak but you guys are just - slobs," Sam began, and then the words screeched to a halt and he squeaked, he actually squeaked, and added, "Shit. Um."

Bucky was still wearing clothes, thank god and all the saints for small mercies, but what the hell was Sam supposed to call the massive bruises - each and every one in the shape of the mouth of a certain Steve Rogers - ringing his throat? Were those decorations? _Badges_ of some kind? What the hell club would Bucky be the president of, he thought, wildly, People Who Actually Got Into Steve Rogers’s Pants, current membership two???

And where the hell was Steve himself - did Sam want to know? He had to know. He preferred to know where the others were at all times. Thank Stark - just this once, the man already had an ego bigger than the fucking Solar System - for JARVIS. 

But he couldn’t see Steve anywhere in the living room and Steve was kind of the exact and complete opposite of inconspicuous most days.

"Rogers, clothes," Bucky called over his shoulder, and then he grabbed one of the blankets draped over the nearest armchair and proceeded to roll himself up in it.

"I thought you wanted me without - oh, hi, Sam," Steve said, and Sam nearly hit the ceiling. 

" _Are_ you wearing clothes?" Sam asked through gritted teeth. "No trolling, no fooling, I carried you before, I can carry you again, and this time I won’t bother to catch you after I drop you from this fucking tower."

"I am, sheesh," was Steve’s reply.

Sam took a very deep breath. 

Turned around.

Steve was wearing the bottom half of a pair of stars-and-stripes PJs and - not much of anything else, and _his_ hickeys looked even worse.

"I am so done with you both," Sam said, and stomped out the way he’d come, to muffled blanket-burrito-Bucky laughter.


	45. snug and safe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written because of [THIS ART](http://temariart.tumblr.com/post/109111421375/hello-baby-steve-3-i-love-your-baby-steve). I mean. Temari has the most adorable art of Baby Steve and Adoring Smitten Helpless Bucky. All the fluff and all the feels. BABY STEVE. ADORING BUCKY.

Seconds ticking off on the microwave oven. A plastic bottle making its lopsided rounds. Little lifting bubbles in warming milk, and - 

Something rattled and crashed and shrieked outside, stressed metal and the incoming storm: the view out the little kitchen window was already distorted by rapidly falling white. A long wailing blast of desperate horns.

In the sudden silence between the microwave beeping to signal the end of its cycle and the lingering echoes of last-minute traffic, a tiny voice in the tiny spaces: “Ba ba ba ba?”

 _Steve,_ Bucky thought, and reached for the milk bottle. It was comfortably warm in his gloved hand. It was just right for drinking, he thought, just the thing to soothe cold and cramps and a slight case of colic.

And colicky Steve might be, but he was a dream of a child all the same: Steve didn’t scream and Steve didn’t throw things. Steve rolled himself up in his piles of blankets - he was a champion at playing burrito filling - and every now and then stuck his thumb in his mouth, and sometimes he’d hold on to a teddy-bear paw for reassurance but he really, vastly preferred Bucky, sleeved left arm and all.

As he did now, smiling and hiccupping and reaching for Bucky - who couldn’t help but smile back as he scooped Steve up from the crib and into the crook of his arm. As he braced Steve on his hip. 

"Mmmm," Steve said around his bottle. He was a bright beating heart against Bucky’s chest, blue eyes and fine-stranded hair and roses blooming in his cheeks. 

"Kee," Steve continued as Bucky continued to take him in. A chubby hand, splayed out like a star, warm against Bucky’s skin.

The storm was coming. Bucky thought about rechecking the perimeter of the apartment. Not for ghosts, and not for possible enemies. He wanted to make sure the apartment was warm. He wanted to make sure Steve wouldn’t wake up shivering. Steve didn’t like the cold. Distressed peeping. Bucky had no interest in hearing those sounds. He wanted a warm Steve, a safe Steve, a happy Steve.

He bent to Steve now, Steve who was industriously finishing off his bottle, and touched a kiss against Steve’s forehead, and his reward was a rapturous sigh and Steve’s hand closing gently against him.


	46. you and which army? her

This is the image that’s stuck in Steve’s mind.

Black shapes on the ground, unmoving, streaming dark rippling shadows.

A matte-black blade in a black-gloved hand.

Ribbon ripped free, knots forcibly undone, blood on dark strands of hair, and the glint of determination in winter-blued eyes.

Half a dozen black-clad shapes or more, bulky with armor and bulky with various weapons, and every single weapon is useless and silent. 

He’s not that far away, all things considered, and he’s actually supposed to be busy, he’s actually supposed to be in the thick of his own fight, but - there’s her.

The other roof. Twenty feet of pure gravity and plain empty air between him and her. The chatter in his earpiece keeps repeating a single set of words. _More on the way!_ He should really be paying attention. He’s not, because - 

Twenty feet away, a door opens, and a gun fires, muzzle-flash and gunpowder-roar in the night.

The woman on the other roof turns. Starts walking. She is not in a hurry. She is not wasting her time or her energy. The movements of her arm are deliberate and neat. He can hear _ping ping ping_ and then she’s leaping forward, arms outstretched, and then - silence. No more gun, no more bullets. 

And the woman stays where she’s landed. He watches her get to her feet and sweep her hair out of her face. He knows about her injuries, but to watch her she doesn’t look like she’s been slashed up at all. She doesn’t look like she’s afraid.

(He’s the only one who hears her cry, and then she cries only when they both know he’s pretending to sleep. It isn’t shame that makes her hide. She still knows how to cry, but she knows it in a tattered way, in a fragmented way, forgotten and remembered and half-remembered.)

Steve dispatches the last of his black-clad enemies and doesn’t think twice. He leaps toward her. At least there is no unimaginable ravine beneath him, and at least he doesn’t have to think about explosions, because the others are supposed to deal with the things going boom.

His task is to bottle up the bad guys. His task and hers, and as he walks toward her the wind whips up and the night skies shiver overhead, not a star or the moon in sight. Somehow he can see her face. The cut on her cheek and the knife in her hand, and her hair streaming in the wind.

The blank bleak smile on her face. “Just like old times,” she whispers.

Steve comes to a halt and reaches out to her, the motion arrested in mid-air. “Can I - ” He likes to ask her permission. He needs to let her know that she always has a choice. 

“Shut up and come here and kiss me,” Becky whispers, and Steve tastes blood on her lips.


	47. ain’t Icarus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [seratonation](http://archiveofourown.org/users/seratonation).
> 
> Fan art inspiration by sunsetagain on tumblr [HERE](http://yourethehellisbucky.tumblr.com/post/109755651144/sunsetagain-guest-art-for-my-friends-fanbook).

Steve swallows and shivers and it’s not because of the cold, not this time. He swallows, he shivers, he shuffles his feet, and he presses his back against the nearest semblance of upright support - a set of handrails that must be connected to the network of devices that Tony Stark uses to get out of his armor - flimsy metal under his hands, against the small of his back. He stays in place. He can’t stop looking.

Just out of arm’s length, just at the very edge of the top of Avengers Tower: a man in black and the coruscating flash of silver pinions and silver panels. 

Steve has to squint, and isn’t that a damned familiar sensation, to see shimmering images of shivering wings: wings that belong to the Winter Soldier, to Bucky Barnes, wings that maybe Steve has been dreaming of, all this time: fever-dreams and ice-dreams; longing, searching; the road to a new normal, fragmented and prone to flashback and forgetting and freedom. 

Is this the first first time or the second first time, Steve thinks, unable to help himself - he has to reach out to Bucky, though he’s in no position to make contact. His hand grasping at free air, whistling wind, rustling black-barred silver. 

He’s halfway to saying Bucky’s name when - 

Steve’s heart leaps, lurches, leaves him gasping - 

Bucky’s stepped off the Tower.

Sunlight, susurrus, Steve: he rushes to the edge, very nearly goes over it himself - 

A flash. Bright reflections. Bright movement: up and away and in seconds far beyond him. Circles in the blue sky. A single feather fluttering down, falling, coming to a stop next to Steve’s unsteady feet. 

Bucky’s flying, god, and he’s no more than a speck in the endless arch of overhead blues and clouds, and - Steve strains his ears, catches the barest echo of a sound. A whoop. A screech. Steve watches, shivering, and Bucky plummets out of the sky. A perfect rapturous raptor’s dive. Stooping. Silverflash of movement and - 

Steve falls to his knees.

Bucky is falling towards him, out of the sky, smiling, hand out.

Steve, shaking, reaches up for him, breathless.


	48. stars fading, but we linger on dear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by Ella Fitzgerald + Louis Armstrong: [Dream a Little Dream of Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6TmogXhOZ8). 
> 
> Written just before 14 Feb 2015.

Echoes of night-fever and shivering, and the lingering bitterness of pills and syrups and herb-teas, and it was all Steve could to do to get to his feet. Sweat on the bedclothes and snowflakes drifting against the closed windows, and he was alone and he was breathing heavily as he changed out the sheets. 

It wasn’t like he was going to be able to share the bed with anyone, not tonight, but he’d rather think thoughts of recovering from the winter in fresh blankets.

Unexpected humming, coming closer, and Steve knew he was staring at the door - at the turning knob, at the widening opening, at the bright smile and the candles and the flowers. Bucky. A neatly knotted tie in threadbare blue, and slicked-back hair, and scuffed-up shoes that were just a size too large.

Bucky looked him up and down, and Steve turned away, already thinking of apologizing, thinking of a retort or an excuse. 

But all Bucky said was, “Get dressed, we’re doing something.”

Steve nearly dropped the pillow he was fluffing. “What?”

“Not going far. But get dressed. Wear that nice suit you bought a couplea months ago. I like you in blue.”

“Bucky,” Steve began. His wheezing heart knocked traitorously against his ribs. To be with Bucky. He wanted that, wanted that so much it sometimes took the little breath that he had away.

But what did Bucky want? 

He’d give a lot for an answer to that question.

He watched as though he’d been separated from his hands, his feet - finishing the job of remaking the bed, pulling the pieces of the blue suit from the shared closet. He still coughed from time to time and every time Bucky was there to stand next to his shoulder, wordless support, wordless comfort.

“You’ll do,” Bucky said, when Steve was dressed. “Come on.” A soft smile. Steve returned it, tentatively.

Up one floor, down one corridor. Through a door and then: a table, a pair of mismatched chairs, a set of chipped plates. The waft of real chocolate and real coffee in the air. A single perfect rose in a blue teacup.

“Bucky,” Steve began, and every question died on his lips as he watched Bucky close the door, as he watched Bucky turn toward him. A hesitating step forward, and another, and another. Bucky’s arms, Bucky’s words. 

“I almost lost you. Again. I don’t want to lose you, never having said so many things, never having done this - ”

Wide-eyed, Steve fell into Bucky’s kiss.


	49. metal arm de chocobo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ficlet talks about chocobos because of [THIS](http://sakuratsukikage.tumblr.com/post/111230329580/every-fandom-should-have-a-fic-with-chocobos) tumblr post, which I agree with wholeheartedly, KWEH.

One moment Bucky Barnes is struggling with memories of a bridge, memories of ice, memories of the flash of light off a pair of rimless glasses; and the next, he’s blinking at a tiny peeping pile of fluff and feathers very near the fingertips of his left hand.

 _Cheep cheep cheep kweh,_ goes the tiny peeping pile, and Bucky nearly falls over when beady eyes open. Yellow feathers and blue eyes. The - bird, it had to be a bird - tilts its head at him. Sounds off. _Kweh?_

"What the hell are you," Bucky manages, and he thinks the words are mangled, English and other languages that he has no idea of how they even got into his head in the first place.

The little bird cheeps some more and hops _right into_ his metal hand. Fearless. Utterly utterly trusting. He could close his fist on it. This is a thing he would have done, before the causeway. 

Here, now, he carefully cradles the bird and brings it closer, and the bird merely ruffles fluff-edged wings and blinks at him, unafraid, even as he peers at it. He sniffs it. He runs a careful fingertip over the top of the bird’s head.

No sign of the egg or of the - nest, he thinks, that’s a word he could use here - in sight.

"Little Sun," he says to the chick, in Russian this time. "Let’s look for a safe place to stay." 

He thinks of another pair of blue eyes.

 _Kweh,_ says the bird, sagely, as though it could read his thoughts.


	50. so let me come to you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fiftieth ficlet in this series was written to the accompaniment of [Eyes on Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oQv3leISYU) from Final Fantasy VIII.
> 
> \---
> 
> Previously:  
> did you ever know that I had mine on you - [the Charles and Erik AU](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/25444695906/ninemoons42-writes-did-you-ever-know-that-i-had)  
> did you ever know that I had mine on you - [the Steve and Bucky WWII story, with rings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1515413/chapters/3417641)

Steve looked up, at the distant blur of shadow silhouetted against the storm-torn sky, and caught his breath. Everything familiar and everything not: for he’d seen that protective stance before, had seen that light in the eyes of a man who wielded a mean sniper rifle, had seen that metal fist clenched and bloodied and nearly ripped to pieces.

The Winter Soldier was here on his part of the battlefield.

Would he fight Steve or — as he had done for the past year now — would he aid Steve, and silently vanish once all hostilities were concluded?

Report of weaponry on the move, weaponry in use, and Steve ducked beneath his shield, threw one last look over his shoulder at the black-clad sentinel with the wild wind-torn hair, and threw himself back into the fight: for here they were swarming for him, faceless goons, who threw terrifically violent punches. One he could withstand. Not a multitude.

So he fought smart and dirty, when he could: he relied on the shield, he used the pistol holstered at his side, he switched over to one of the small knives he’d “borrowed” from Natasha when the ammunition ran out. Blood ran in his wake and he couldn’t stop, he wasn’t allowed to, and he was breathless and weary and _there were still so many of them_.

Steve groaned.

His opponents began to taunt him.

And then — a black shadow hurtling — a melee, a dogpile — Steve strained, and heard a voice in pain, and with a roar he waded into the fight and started using the never-dull edge of his shield. He was merciless and it was quick, this time, and then — retreat.

Enemies falling back.

Steve looked down at the man on the ground.

Bleeding and bruised and battle-stained.

Clear blue eyes.

Steve knelt.

“Till the end of the line,” the Winter Soldier whispered.

Steve whispered the words back.

And the Winter Soldier closed his eyes.

Steve held him. Beating hearts. Soft breaths.


	51. April 1st no-fooling tumblr ficlets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first one involves a prank on a winged Bucky, written for seratonation; the second is an expansion of a ten-word Steve/Bucky ficlet for luninosity.

Steve looked at the package in Natasha's hands and was tempted to break it open over her head, if only he didn't know just how vicious she could be in terms of payback. Instead he said, "Ha ha, that's hilarious," completely deadpan and completely dead-eyed, and instead of responding Natasha just opened the package and scooped out a handful of birdseed and began to scatter it on the ground, glittering golden grains. Soon there was a circle and Steve was trapped inside the circle. "For Buckybird."

***

Bucky had to relearn how to sleep in Steve's bed. Restless nights and the rain driving against the windows as Manhattan stewed unhappily in the throes of a storm. Steve was warm and he had weird cold feet and Bucky didn't like cold, didn't like the whistling lonely wind, and he curled up in blankets and pillows and eventually the warmth of Steve's arms wrapped around him: and even then he spent a night watching Steve sleep, envy and gentleness in his touching wandering fingertips.


	52. sugar sugar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some references borrowed from _The Joy of Cooking_.
> 
> Taken from [this prompt](http://imaginebucky.tumblr.com/post/115785374192/imagine-bucky-coping-with-trauma-and-everything) at [Imagine Bucky](http://imaginebucky.tumblr.com).

There are containers multiplying in the refrigerator, and there is an assortment of little tubes full of bright colors next to those containers, and in the mornings Steve wakes up to the ghosts of baking and the delicate clouds of sugar, and he has no idea where the food is going off to, or who is making the food in the first place.

He knows Sam bakes, but he doesn’t know Sam to break into the Brooklyn apartment and work there, and besides Sam’s cramped kitchen in Harlem tends to be full of cookies and chocolate cake and Steve isn’t seeing a proliferation of chocolate in his own kitchen.

So one night he stays up and – his heart skips a beat. His breath catches. Lamplight glint off a left arm. 

One cup water. Three cups sugar. Precise movements and precise measurements. The barest dash of – cream of tartar?

The shadow, the ghost, that can only be Bucky, making a batch of something that Steve finally recognizes as fondant: one way of keeping sugar and using it over and over again to make the scarce supply of it last. Fondant on baked goods, fondant as the basis of candies. Extravagant things, during the war. Commonplace, readymade, now – but Bucky, if this is him and Steve remembers him accurately – a sweet tooth and a natural knack for the kitchen – is still making the stuff from scratch.

Cupcakes. A ripened batch of fondant. Steve watches Bucky ice the cupcakes and decorate them. A broken hum that could almost have sounded like Steve’s jingle from the war.

A dozen cupcakes iced in white. A bright red sugar-rose in the center of six, and a fondant shield on the others. “For you,” Bucky says.


	53. I need a little give and take

 

Natasha walked onto the common floor to the delicate strains of an almost familiar song, something she might have heard Sam play before – but then she remembered he’d gone home to his mother for the weekend.

So who was playing, and whose voice could she hear, rumbling sweet purr of a hum?

Silhouettes against the New York City night, broad shoulders and contrasting hair, pale and dark.

Super soldiers riffing together, a matched set: as she watched Steve ran playful scales to the tap of Bucky’s foot. And then they started over, together, the two of them singing Billy Joel just for themselves.


	54. you chase away the dragon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for St George's Day / La Diada di Sant Jordi, 23 April.

Steve woke up to a soft scent from very close by, almost sweetly intoxicating enough to be cloying, and he only had to turn his head to find its source: roses, a bare handful but enough to suffuse the room in rich wafting waves of wine-dark fragrance.

He glanced at the door to see that it was closed; he glanced at his windows and they were still open at precisely the same angle at which he’d left them last night.

Just wide enough to admit someone the size of a Bucky Barnes.

Steve cast around for something to put the flowers in – they truly were lovely, rich red and powerful perfume – and he settled for carefully picking the petals from two of them and scattering them over his pillows. Never mind if they left red shadows on his sheets – he wanted those stains, wanted those marks, as though they were reminders of a not-presence that was also not-absence.

He opened the door.

There were books at his feet.

Battered things, he could see that immediately: but they were the books he’d looked longingly at, new and uncreased, in shop windows long gone, years and years ago, when he was still skinny and dreaming in colorblind passion of sunsets and city lights. 

Now those books were here, down to the titles and the faded brushstrokes, and he dashed the tears from his eyes.

On his breakfast table, the last of the gifts: a note. The handwriting a cross between chickenscratch and a recovering cursive, carefully rounded strokes next to jagged ones.

_Home soon. I just need to kill some dragons._

Steve pressed the note to his heart. It didn’t matter that it had gone unsigned. 

It mattered that he was waiting, and that he was not waiting in vain.

“Bucky,” he said, softly, into the morning silence, and he imagined the answer, imagined the warm smile, the smile of a knight with an armor-clad arm.


	55. in the still of the night

He takes in the room with a single sweep of a glance. Bars of stray golden lamplight, and the faintest hint of soap and fabric softener, and the even breaths: in. Out. Sleep. The moon is only just visible in one of the windows, silver light peeking out from the swirling skirts of clouds on the ponderous move, falling onto battered socks and blanket-covered bruises.

He pauses, just, over the tensely sleeping form of Steve.

(not his mission)

(please don’t make me do this)

(white star, falling shield)

For a moment he does not see broad shoulders or the markings of armor and straps and cowl. For a moment he sees thin skin stretched over clavicle and jaw line. For a moment he sees suspenders and paint-stained cuffs and not quite matching buttons.

Steve must be so tired to sleep so deeply.

(who am I?)

(he called me a name)

(he said I was Bucky)

Bucky, he thinks, it must have been his name once, because he still has the urge to answer it. A buried urge. Entombed beneath the static and hiss of broken memories. But it’s there. Bucky. A name.

Bucky reaches out to Steve, and pauses. A breath away. A touch that doesn’t quite make it. But his fingertips are close enough to catch mist, gentle, sighing: the in and out of Steve’s sleeping breaths.

A different thought. Someone else’s memory? No, no, it had to be his, because even his left arm knew: knew the weight of Steve in his arms, knew the warmth of him. Sweet. Strange.

Bucky takes a breath of his own, and makes contact.

Steve doesn’t wake.

Bucky is torn between running back to his room and locking the door and perhaps leaping out the window. He could tear the bars off and he could smash through the glass.

A word. A name. A fragile breath –

“Please.”

Bucky knows how to move. Silence and strength and swift movements.

He has to reach for Steve.

Steve says, “Bucky.”

Awake or asleep? Bucky doesn’t know.

But that word. It’s – it’s him, it’s something he remembers, and not in the sense of orders or those cold cold contemptuous orders. Not in the sense of the scream in his head that is mindwiping and poison and his blood turning into red frost.

He moves, and he’s swift about it, and in the next moment: the immense weight of Steve in his arms.

This, he remembers, and more recently.

He remembers struggling through sluggish water and wreckage. A muddy bank.

The Steve in his arms is dry and bruised and weary. Fast asleep. Muttering. “Bucky.”

“Steve,” Bucky whispers back. He holds on.

Steve sighs, and turns his face into Bucky’s worn shirt. The mutters trail off into deep breaths.

It could be hours until dawn; it could be minutes.

Bucky holds Steve close.


	56. sweet child

Steve opened his eyes.

He wanted to regret waking up – he’d been safe for a while, he’d not been battling those snowbound nightmares, he’d actually been sleeping for once – but there was a soft noise in the moonlit room and it was the noise that had woken him up, and he needed to find that noise. Needed to investigate.

Rustling, just at the edge of his hearing and the bed.

Carefully he sat up.

One corner of his blanket was definitely getting pulled out of place, and along with it, one of the other pillows, and –

Tiny fingers, scrabbling.

There was no one else in the room to see him smile, but Steve covered his mouth anyway, and shook his head, and whispered, “Okay, you know what, I’m not even going to ask how.”

Because the little shadow that was determinedly climbing onto his bed was topped by a shock of tousled dark hair, smelling like strawberries and milk and apples.

Wide blue eyes. Moonlight slanting across soft features and knitted brows.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve whispered to the toddler. No response, but that was understandable, because Bucky was stuffing his fist into his mouth and sucking contentedly.

“Bucky,” Steve said, again, and this time – this time the toddler looked at him.

A breath, and then a bright almost toothless smile. Sweet burbling.

Steve reached over and tucked Bucky into the crook of one arm. Tapped a fingertip to the soap-scented space between Bucky’s eyebrows.

No one knew how Bucky had come to be in this state, let alone how he’d even appeared on the doorstep of the new Avengers facility – but perhaps no one was really paying attention. There’d been a very polite near-brawl to see who’d get to pick him up first.

(Of course Natasha won, and Steve and the others were treated to the sight of her talking to Bucky in low and serious Russian. To little Bucky’s babbling in return.)

Now here was Bucky, giggling softly to himself, and Steve pressed a gentle kiss to the top of his head.

“Ba ba ba,” was Bucky’s reply, and Steve let him reach out with chubby hands. Leaned in closer so that they were almost nose to nose.

Bucky cooed and spread his hand against Steve’s cheek.

Steve had never gotten to see Bucky as a baby – he and Bucky had been of an age, sort of, and Bucky hadn’t even existed in his own life until the Barneses had moved in next door, five-year-old Bucky reading tattered little picture books and tugging beat-up little wooden cars on strings.

Now Bucky was here, trying to put his arms around Steve, and Steve cradled him carefully, gratefully.


	57. confess, confess

“I think I’m in love with you – and I think I’m terrified.”

Bucky looked up from the books piled on his desk. Sound of shuffling feet on the floor, and the bright brave blush on Steve’s cheeks, and the echoes of the raucous party going on downstairs (that they were supposed to be ignoring because exams were a pain in the ass). 

And Bucky processed the words, slowly and carefully and he leapt out of his chair. Two strides to cross to Steve and he threw his arms around Steve’s shoulders and whispered, “Hold on. Hold on. I got you.”

“You – you’re okay with me being scared?”

“More than okay. Perfectly okay. Because I’ve been scared of telling you, too.” Bucky leaned closer, and whispered, “Can I?”

“Can you – what?” was Steve’s reply, shivering and gentle and sweet.

“Can I tell you something? _I’m fucking terrified._ And _I think I’m in love with you._ ”

Arms coming up around him at last: the weight of Steve around him, in his arms. The warmth of their embrace. “You. You too?” Steve was whispering. “You were scared?”

“I was afraid I’d ruin – I’d ruin us,” Bucky said. Steve smelled like charcoal and chalk and different kinds of paper. The oils he used in his painting classes. “I was afraid I’d lose you.”

“So was I,” Steve said.

Seized by a sudden impulse, Bucky pulled back, and attempted a smile. “Can I?” he asked again. “I want to kiss you. Can I kiss you?”

“ _Yes,_ ” Steve said, and Bucky stopped being afraid. Closed the distance. Kept his eyes open.


	58. imagine me imagine you

The coffee is brackish and diluted, and the sandwich in his hand is cooling in the rapid sweep of the late-afternoon breeze, and now he’s regretting that he didn’t close up his jacket before going back outside – but his hands are full and the breeze slashes cold into his sides, at his ears, and the only thing he can do is suck it up and make sure he has his backpack and make his way uptown.

The sandwich isn’t even worthy of the name, and it sits heavily in his stomach, and suddenly he loses his taste for his coffee and he gives the cup away to the first street artist he comes across. Skinny, blond, sensible enough if the ragged suit and the oversized coat are any indication, but who’d be drawing colored-chalk portraits on the sidewalk in this weather?

Still, Bucky stops. Buttons up his jacket. “You look like you need this more than I do.”

“That’s not coffee,” the artist says after a hurried gulp and a wince. “Not that I wanted to be rude. Thanks for the coffee.”

Bucky shrugs. “Hard to find a good cup nowadays.”

“I agree,” the artist says, and then Bucky watches him get back down on his knees, watches him trace a vibrant spiral into the rutted and cracking concrete, green and blue and a touch of yellow all at once. A bright arc of white, and a yellow crescent. Brown and black towers and Bucky thinks he’s seen these colors before.

“See anything familiar?” the chalk artist says, without looking up from his work.

Bucky blinks. “How’d you know I was still here?”

“Lucky guess.”

Bucky blinks again. Squints at the nightscape flowing from the artist’s hands. “I swear I’ve seen that thing you’re drawing before.”

“Yes, you have,” and there are blue hills rolling, the artist working in such sure grace and speed.

Bucky takes his phone out. Takes a picture. “Vincent van Gogh?”

“Right in one.”

The artist makes a quick adjustment to a fiery star and then gets to his feet, dusting the chalk residue from his hands. 

Bucky looks at him. A small, satisfied smile.

“It’ll be gone later, or tomorrow, or when it rains,” the artist says. “But right now it’s there. People can see it. Maybe people will feel better. Maybe it’ll remind them of good things.”

Then the artist produces a scarf and a beanie and smiles, and starts walking away.

Bucky blinks at the chalked night and then at the retreating figure of the artist, and then – he doesn’t know how he does it, but he just finds himself chasing the other man down. Falling into step with him.

“Yeah?” the artist asks.

“What’s your name,” Bucky blurts out. “I mean. I took a picture. I want to show it to my friends. Gotta know the name of the artist. Credit, you know.”

The artist smiles, and stops, and the crowd flows around him as he holds out his hand. “Steve Rogers.”

Bucky takes that hand, heedless of chalk grit and rough calluses. “Bucky Barnes. I – I’d like to take you out for a real coffee.”


	59. two sides of the same coin

Five strides, coming and going. Five strides, caught within walls. Five strides around a cot and a cabinet and a small square window.

Five strides, and he couldn’t get any further. His own body wouldn’t let him. Sharp lancing pain up his right instep. He’d almost gotten used to it, in the day and the night since he’d forced himself to get up from his bed.

He could smell medicines and iodine and brackish coffee and the lingering faint scent of weathered and cracked leather. The distant memory of seared air and ozone. 

There was a strand of long dark hair left behind on the lone pillow, crumpled into a forlorn heap on the bed.

Bucky had gone on a mission, and everything had gone well until the very end, and now it had been three days since he’d last appeared on anyone’s radar, and Steve was here. Alone. No new word.

So he paced, and took no notice of the hours passing by – except that every second seemed to grate on his nerves; every hour seemed to bite deeper into his skin.

And then, suddenly: a knock on the door.

Steve threw it open and – 

Bruises. Dried blood. A stained bandage. One boot missing.

“Steve. I – ”

“ _Where. Have. You. Been,_ ” Steve ground out. 

His eyes traveled over Bucky’s battered frame. The stink of mud and gunshot residue and copper. 

“Baby,” Bucky was saying when Steve could focus again. “Wanda and I found a baby.” Dark violent flash of emotion in those bruise-ringed eyes. “Your eyes and hair. My ears. And – and she’d been hurt. They’d been drawing blood from her, they’d been putting _things_ into her. I lost it – Wanda lost it – we tore the place apart. Tore the idiots who were hurting that little girl apart. We left nothing behind. I’ve never seen her that angry before.”

And Steve pulled back. Anger draining from him, to be replaced by worry, to be replaced by a grim kind of satisfaction. “The baby. You brought her back.”

“Nat and Bruce and Sam are with her now. I asked them to call us once they’ve checked her over.”

“You didn’t come back when you said you would,” Steve said, gently now.

“Had to save a life,” Bucky said.

Pride, that was pride prickling at the corners of Steve’s eyes – that and relief and now he opened his arms, and groaned softly at the willing warm welcome weight of Bucky, and he held Bucky close.

“You should see her, Steve,” Bucky whispered.

“I will. But – but you first,” Steve said.

“Yeah.”


	60. three swords

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From an AU prompt on my [tumblr](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/).

Steve watches Bucky tilt his head just a fraction to the left, and Steve follows the line of Bucky’s sight, and Steve sees the cluster of schoolgirls in their skirts and their parasols and, incongruously, their leather vests, and they are babbling to each other in the rich rising cadences of Basque, and Steve glances back at the honestly amused light in Bucky’s eyes and it’s not the first time that Steve wonders how many languages are swimming around in Bucky’s head.

(Steve’s picked up more than a little Wakandan, from the long weeks and months. Ten dialects and several levels of courtesy, and it’s intricate and he feels that he wants to know more.)

Steve watches Bucky watch as the girls move off, now arguing in French about the nearest patisserie, and pulls a coin out of his pocket. “Call it,” he says.

“Heads,” Bucky says, still looking around every now and then.

Bucky will not look him in the eye, but Bucky will hold his hand, and Steve gives his free hand gladly and squeezes back. He likes to hold both of Bucky’s hands. The rising temperatures will not harm the metal fingertips or make them overheat. 

Steve flicks the coin upwards, and it glitters in the long banked wash of sunlight, and it lands on tails.

Bucky grumbles, but only half-heartedly, and mostly fondly. “I’m picking where we’re eating, then.”

Steve snorts quietly. “I will not be left tearing up from something like Szechuan peppers.”

“Suit yourself.”

And they get on the metro. Steve thinks he still remembers visiting Paris just before the Art Nouveau station entrances, and now those beautiful works of art are gone and has he really missed anything? He buys their tickets and they get down at Louvre-Rivoli station, and there’s a lot of people out on the streets, a steadily swelling stream towards a familiar glass pyramid.

Once inside, he lets Bucky set the pace: and he’s not surprised, not really, when Bucky lingers next to things like the _Virgin and Child from the Sainte-Chapelle_. His own eyes are drawn to _La belle ferronnière_. Something about the red of her dress makes him think of Peggy.

They steer clear of the crush to get in to see the _Mona Lisa_ , without even having to think about it.

And of all the works in the museum, of all the acres of art, it’s on the _Oath of the Horatii_ that he and Bucky spend the most time: he can see Bucky’s eyes drinking in the lines of the swords, the outstretched arms, the weeping women.

“Was that us?” Bucky says, after.

Steve draws him closer. Thinks about it. “That was me,” he says. “I made a promise to –- someone who was important to me. To my friend. I’d make that promise to him again, any day he asked me to.”

“I want to make a promise to someone, too.”

Steve nods, wordless support.

And Bucky slides a knife out from somewhere in his sleeves, somewhere in his shirt, and places it in Steve’s hand. Sheath and all. Steve’s familiar with the weapon. Matte black blade and exquisite balance.

“You always had my shield,” he says, tucking the knife into his pocket. “Even when I wasn’t carrying it. Even when I don’t have it now.”

Bucky smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on [tumblr](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/).


End file.
